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English  Leadership 


ENGLISH  LEADERSHIP 


ENGLISH    LEADINGS    IN 
MODERN    HISTORY 

AN   ESSAY   BY 

J.  N.  LARNED 

EDITOR  OF  "history  FOR   READY  REFERENCE,"  ETC. 
WITH    AN    INTRODUCTION    BY 

WILLIAM  HOWARD  TAFT 


The  Geographic  Factor  in  English  History 

BY   DONALD    E.  SMITH 

EngHsh  Contributions  to  Scientific  Thought 

AND 

The  English  Gift  to  World  Literature 

BY    GRACE    F.  CALDWELL 


1918 

C.  A.  NICHOLS   COMPANY 

SPRINGFIELD,   MASS. 

6^ 


Copyright,  1918, 

by 

C.  A.  NICHOLS  CO. 


Press  of 

J.J.  Little  &  Ives  Co. 

New  York 


FOREWORD 

In  these  days,  when  peace  has  appeared  in  the 
offing  of  the  harbor  of  our  hopes,  when  the  day  of 
judgment  for  nations  and  institutions  is  imminent, 
in  days  when  the  great  alliance  of  all  English- 
speaking  peoples  in  a  common  cause,  for  a  common 
ideal,  has  brought  to  them  as  never  before  a  real- 
ization of  their  common  inheritance  and  of  their 
common  effort  toward  the  same  social  end, — at 
such  a  time  it  seems  peculiarly  fitting  to  bring  to 
light  a  manuscript  on  "English  Leadings  in  Mod- 
ern History,"  written  before  the  war  by  the  late 
J.  N.  Earned,  presenting  the  claims  of  the  English 
peoples  to  the  gratitude  of  a  democratic  world. 

The  incomplete  form  in  which  the  manuscript 
was  left  at  Mr.  Larned's  death  necessitated  a  care- 
ful revision  and  the  addition  of  some  new  ma- 
terial. For  this  editorial  work  the  publishers  ob- 
tained the  services  of  Grace  F.  Caldwell.  The 
editor  has  taken  all  possible  care  to  preserve  Mr. 
Larned's  meaning  intact;  all  corrections  or 
changes  have  been  made  solely  for  the  purpose 

V 


VI  Foreword 

of  clarifying  and  enforcing  the  meaning  which  the 
author  himself  intended  to  convey.  The  addition- 
al material  inserted  by  the  editor  is  distinguished 
from  the  original  text  by  inclosure  in  brackets. 
The  footnotes  citing  other  works  in  support  of, 
or  in  contrast  with,  the  opinions  of  the  author 
show  to  what  a  remarkable  degree  his  scholarship 
stands  the  test  of  comparison  with  later  authori- 
ties. 

The  purpose  of  the  author  is  best  expressed  in 
his  own  words:  "I  do  not  intend  to  speak  boast- 
fully of  the  English  peoples  (under  which  racial 
name  I  include  the  English-speaking  peoples  of 
America  as  well  as  the  English  of  Great  Brit- 
ain), although  I  shall  uphold  large  claims  for 
them,  of  preeminent  leadership  in  most  of  the 
modern  movements  of  human  advance.  Such 
claims  are  indisputable,  but  I  find  them  to  be 
grounded  as  much,  at  least,  on  the  influence  of 
helpful  circumstances  in  history  as  on  the  work- 
ing of  qualities  that  are  peculiar  to  the  English 
race.  Hence  a  boastful  account  of  English  lead- 
ings in  modern  history  would  be  inconsistent  with 
my  views.  .  .  .  This  may  all  have  been  done  be- 
fore, in  an  equally  concise  way,  but  I  have  no 
knowledge  of  a  similar  tracing  of  the  facts  on 
their  several  lines,  and  I  have  thought  them  too 


Foreword  VII 

interesting,  at  least,  to  be  left  in  neglect.  I  will 
put  no  interpretation  upon  them, — attempt  to  give 
them  no  meaning,  but  leave  them  to  bear  to  those 
who  read  this  essay  whatever  significance  they 
may." 

In  Mr.  Larned's  "English  Leadings  in  Mod- 
ern History,"  the  theme  of  English  leadership 
along  one  line,  the  political,  is  very  carefully  and 
broadly  worked  out;  but  the  suddenness  of  his 
death  in  19 13  prevented  him  from  carrying  out 
w'hat  was  obviously  his  purpose, — to  trace  out 
not  only  one  but  several  lines  of  English  leader- 
ship. In  order  that  this  end  might  be  attained, 
the  publishers  have  included  in  this  volume  an  in- 
troductory essay  on  "Enghsh  Political  Genius"  by 
William  Howard  Taft,  and  three  other  essays 
grouped  about  Mr.  Larned's — one  by  Donald  E. 
Smith  on  "The  Geographic  Factor  in  English 
History,"  the  other  two  by  Grace  F.  Caldwell  on 
"English  Contributions  to  Scientific  Thought"  and 
"The  English  Gift  to  World  Literature."  In  the 
selection  and  arrangement  of  this  material  the 
publishers  have  attempted  to  secure  unity  by  keep- 
ing close  to  the  fundamental  idea  in  Mr.  Larned's 
work,  "English  Leadings  in  Modern  History." 

The  Publishers, 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     English  Political  Genius    ...         i 

By  WILLIAM  HOWARD  TAFT 

II.     English  Leadings  in  Modern  His- 
tory  33 

By  J.  N.  LARNED 

III.  The  Geographic  Factor  in  English 

History 163 

By  DONALD  E.  SMITH 

IV.  English   Contributions  to   Scien- 

tific Thought 217 

By  grace  F.  CALDWELL 

V.    The  English  Gift  to  World  Liter- 
ature       345 

By  grace  F.  CALDWELL 


Introduction 
ENGLISH  POLITICAL  GENIUS 


William  Howard  Taft 


Introduction 
ENGLISH  POLITICAL  GENIUS 

Representative  popular  government  and 
civil  liberty  are  the  benefits  which  England  has 
conferred  upon  the  world.  A  study  of  their 
growth  is  full  of  interest.  It  began  in  the  forests 
of  Germany,  with  the  Angles  and  Saxons  before 
they  invaded  England,  and  has  continued,  for 
many  centuries,  down  to  the  present  world  strug- 
gle for  their  successful  maintenance  and  suprem- 
acy. For  a  time  in  this  war  the  cause  of  free  in- 
stitutions seemed  to  hang  in  the  balance.  Now, 
although  there  is  much  of  the  battle  yet  to  fight, 
its  ultimate  victory  is  assured.  It  is  well  always, 
but  now  more  than  ever,  to  tell,  chapter  by  chap- 
ter, the  wonderful  story  of  the  hammering  out  by 
Englishmen,  in  more  than  a  thousand  years,  of  the 
links  of  the  chain  that  now  hold  government  sub- 
ject to  the  will  of  the  people,  and  the  purpose  of 
government  to  the  maintenance  of  individual  free- 
dom and  equality  of  opportunity. 

Mr.  Earned,  one-time  Librarian  of  the  Buffalo 
3 


4  English  Leadership 

Library,  gave  his  life  to  the  study  of  history,  and 
has  left  works  of  far  greater  volume  and  scope 
than  the  treatise  to  which  this  is  the  introduction. 
But  while  a  detailed  account  of  the  various 
eras  in  England's  history  is  most  important  for  the 
serious  students  who  have  the  time  and  inclination 
to  master  the  events,  and  to  fit  them  into  the  mo- 
saic of  each  century's  progress,  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  for  the  mass  of  men  he  does  not 
serve  a  more  useful  purpose  who  reduces  to  a  brief 
survey  the  course  of  the  great  events  in  the  making 
of  civil  liberty  and  representative  government  so 
that  the  busy  man  may  read  it,  and  by  reason  of 
its  trenchant  description  and  its  emphasis  in  proper 
proportion,  he  can  carry  the  summary  in  his  mind 
permanently  for  constant  use.  This  is  what  Mr. 
Larned  has  done  in  the  essay  entitled  "English 
Leadings  in  Modern  History." 

Instead  of  reviewing  the  admirable  and  inter- 
esting essay  in  which  Mr.  Larned  has  traced  from 
their  Teutonic  home  the  work  of  the  English  peo- 
ple in  hammering  out  a  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people  and  for  the  people,  I  commend  to 
every  lover  of  liberty  regulated  by  law  a  reading 
of  the  essay  itself.  Its  perspicuous  style,  its  happy 
arrangement,  and  its  sense  of  proportion  will  fix 
in  his  mind  permanently  the  main  and  retainable 


English  Political  Genius  5 

steps  in  the  most  remarkable  story  in  secular  his- 
tory of  the  growth  of  a  germinal  idea  through  a 
bitter,  hard  and  discouraging  struggle  of  twelve 
centuries  to  the  rule  of  the  people  by  representative 
institutions,  which  secure  to  them  individual  hb- 
erty,  and  equality  of  opportunity  in  the  pursuit  of 
happiness. 

Mr.  Larned  has  pointed  out  that  Montesquieu 
wrote  his  book  on  the  "Spirit  of  the  Laws"  in  the 
1 8th  century  while  the  transfer  of  the  executive 
power  from  the  King  to  a  responsible  Cabinet  was 
going  on.  His  admiration  and  approval  of  the 
English  form  of  government  were  based  on  its  di- 
vision into  three  branches, — the  executive  in  the 
King,  the  legislative  in  Parliament,  and  the  judicial 
in  the  courts.  It  was  under  the  influence  of 
Montesquieu,  too,  and  of  the  framework  of  the 
British  constitution  at  that  time  that  our  own 
Federal  Constitution  was  framed  and  adopted,  in 
which  the  executive  power,  independent  of  Con- 
gress in  most  respects,  was  vested  in  an  elected 
President,  and  his  power  separated  with  much  care 
from  that  of  the  legislative  branch,  and  from  that 
of  the  judiciary.  Since  then,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
legislative  and  executive  branches  are  united  under 
one  control.  This  introduction  is  not  the  place  to 
discuss  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  the 


6  English  Leadership 

two  systems.  Many  have  claimed  that  the  Eng- 
lish system  makes  the  administration  of  the  gov- 
ernment more  responsive  to  the  people's  will  be- 
cause a  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons  may 
turn  out  a  government  at  any  time,  whereas  a 
President  holds  office  for  four  years,  no  matter 
how  popular  opinion  may  change  in  the  meantime. 
But  this  argument  is  not  quite  fair.  The  change 
of  executive  in  England  is  not  necessarily  respon- 
sive to  the  will  of  the  people  and  the  electorate. 
It  is  responsive  to  the  change  of  opinion  of  the 
existing  members  of  the  Parliament  who  have  been 
elected  on  issues  involving  bitter  partisanship  and 
who  are  quite  likely  to  continue  their  support  of 
the  Cabinet  they  established  long  after  the  people 
may  wish  them  out  of  office. 

A  Parliament  may  last  five  years,  should  the 
majority  therein  desire  it.  Our  Congress  must  be 
renewed  in  the  House  of  Representatives  and  in 
one-third  of  the  Senate  every  two  years.  It  is, 
therefore,  open  to  argument  which  form  of  govern- 
ment is  more  quickly  responsive  to  the  ultimate 
wish  of  the  people,  but  both,  practically  and  in  the 
long  run,  accord  with  their  rule. 

Mr.  Earned  does  not  deal  specifically,  however, 
with  the  growth  of  English  civil  liberty  and  indi- 
vidual freedom,  except  as  that  is  effected  by  free 


English  Political  Genius  7 

representative  Institutions  and  the  rule  of  the  peo- 
ple in  government.  Side  by  side  with  the  develop- 
ment of  such  institutions  and  indeed  as  a  part  of  it, 
was  the  growth  of  a  bill  of  rights.  The  four  im- 
portant fundamental  instruments  in  which  it  is 
found  are  the  Magna  Carta,  the  Petition  of  Right, 
the  Habeas  Corpus  Act  and  the  Bill  of  Rights  of 
1688.  It  is  most  interesting  to  note  that  the  bills 
of  right  in  modern  constitutions  derived  from 
British  precedent  are  not  confined  to  mere  declara- 
tions of  the  value  of  individual  liberty;  they  are 
not  mere  formal  monitions  to  those  responsible  for 
government,  directing  that  they  be  just  and  fair 
md  impartial  in  the  protection  of  individual  rights; 
they  are  usually  not  declarations  of  substantive 
law.  They,  most  of  them,  relate  to  procedure — 
they  are  adjective  law.  They  grew  in  English  his- 
tory out  of  the  necessities  of  actual  abuses  of 
power.  They  are  the  machinery  by  which  the  self- 
reliant  and  independent  individual  is  offered  the 
opportunity  to  vindicate  his  right  and  to  secure  it 
by  invoking  the  action  of  an  independent  and  cour- 
ageous judiciary  sworn  to  carry  out  the  guaranteed 
procedure  to  determine  whether  the  rights  of  the 
individual  are  being  violated,  and,  if  so,  to  cure 
the  wrong.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  great  prin- 
ciple of  Magna  Carta  that  "no  man  shall  be  de- 


8  English  Leadership 

prived  of  life,  liberty  or  property  without  due 
process  of  law,"  is  not  a  declaration  that  he  shall 
not  be  unjustly  deprived  of  either — it  is  only  a 
direction  that  he  shall  have  his  hearing  and  due 
procedure  before  losing  anything  which  he  claims 
either  as  property,  liberty  or  life.  This  is  no  cove- 
nant insuring  him  justice.  It  only  gives  to  him  the 
machinery  by  which  he  will  probably  secure  justice. 
He  is  to  have  his  day  in  court,  and  he  is  to  have  a 
judgment  by  an  impartial  tribunal.  Take  the 
Habeas  Corpus  Act  of  1679,  enacted  by  Parlia- 
ment even  under  the  Stuart,  "who  never  said  a 
foolish  thing  and  never  did  a  wise  one."  That 
act  made  it  the  sworn  duty  of  a  judge  appealed  to 
to  look  into  the  legality  of  the  detention  of  any 
subject  of  the  King,  to  issue  a  writ,  called  the  writ 
of  Habeas  Corpus,  and  bring  the  person  of  the 
prisoner  into  court  and  there  investigate  the  legal- 
ity of  his  custody.  Either  the  prisoner  or  a  friend 
might  invoke  the  action  of  the  court.  It  was  a 
writ  of  high  privilege,  and  a  Judge  who  refused 
to  issue  it  when  his  action  was  properly  sought  by 
a  petition,  was  subject  to  heavy  penalty.  Other 
guaranties  of  liberty  were  the  hearing  before  the 
Grand  Jury  before  a  man  could  be  indicted  for 
infamous  crimes,  and  the  trial  before  a  petit  jury 
before  a  man  could  be  convicted.    In  the  course  of 


English  Political  Genius  9 

softening  the  cruel  severities  of  the  common  law 
of  crimes,  the  judges  threw  around  the  defendant 
the  protection  of  many  rules  of  procedure  calcu- 
lated to  save  him  from  unjust  convictions  which 
have  now  been  embodied  in  our  Federal  Constitu- 
tion as  a  part  of  our  modern  bills  of  rights. 

As  our  Federal  bill  of  rights  Is  embodied  In  a 
written  constitution  which  It  Is  the  function  of  the 
Courts  to  interpret  and  enforce  in  cases  brought 
before  It,  even  as  against  an  act  of  Congress,  It 
has  had  more  judicial  exposition  by  our  Supreme 
Court  than  these  same  guarantees  had  in  English 
Courts.  In  England  Parliament  Is  omnipotent 
and  can  violate  the  Bill  of  Rights  at  will.  Not  so 
Congress  whose  lawmaking  Is  limited  by  the  Con- 
stitution. This  circumstance  has  given  at  least  one 
of  our  guarantees  a  wider  effect  than  It  had  at  com- 
mon law.  The  declaration  that  "no  man  shall 
be  deprived  of  life,  liberty  or  property  without  due 
process  of  law"  meant  In  the  Magna  Carta  and 
means  in  English  Courts  that  the  process  must  be 
one  sanctioned  by  custom,  i.  e.,  by  the  common  law 
or  by  act  of  Parliament.  It  Is  directed  only 
against  executive  abuses  of  Individual  right.  In 
our  Constitution,  In  Its  5th  and  14th  amendments, 
it  means  more  than  this.  It  is  directed  against 
both  executive  and  legislative  abuses  of  individual 


10  English  Leadership 

right,  against  abuses  by  Congress  and  state  legisla- 
tures as  well  as  against  those  of  a  President  or  a 
Governor.  Therefore,  the  Supreme  Court  has  not 
hesitated  to  ignore  as  invalid  any  law  of  Congress 
or  a  state  which  does  not  secure  to  an  individual 
the  procedure  in  defending  his  rights  which  shall 
prevent  his  deprivation  of  them  arbitrarily  and 
without  a  full  hearing  by  some  kind  of  a  tribunal. 
These  guaranties  of  civil  liberty  in  the  English 
constitution  are  a  part  of  the  common  law  and 
were  formulated  as  part  of  it.  They  were  not 
framed  by  a  theorist  in  government.  They  are 
not  part  of  a  magnificent  system  of  law,  admirably 
arranged,  comprehensively  stated  and  logically 
framed,  like  the  civil  law.  The  civil  law  is  a  beau- 
tiful system.  It  has  come  down  from  the  Roman 
law,  and  has  been  worked  over  and  over  until  in 
modern  times  it  finds  its  most  beautiful  expression 
in  the  Code  Napoleon  and  the  kindred  codes  of 
other  civil  law  countries.  As  a  scientific  exposition 
of  law,  the  civil  law  is  superior  to  the  common 
law.  The  common  law  is  not  a  code — it  has  been 
worked  out  by  special  instances  through  decisions 
of  courts  in  thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  cases.  It  has  been  established  by  custom  of  the 
realm  and  interpreted  by  courts  and  finally  formu- 
lated by  them. 


English  Political  Genius         ii 

Tennyson's  characterization  of  it,  where  he 
speaks  of 

"the  lawless  science  of  our  law, — 
That  codeless  myriad  of  precedent, 
That  wilderness  of  single  instances," 

has  much  of  truth  in  it. 

And  yet  for  many  centuries  it  has  served  the 
purpose  of  the  English  people  and  of  those  who 
have  derived  their  civilization  from  the  English 
people,  and  it  has  done  so  because  it  has  reflected 
the  practical  character  of  those  peoples  and  the 
practical  way  in  which  they  have  made  the  rules 
of  action  to  be  enforced  as  law. 

Mr.  Earned  makes  reference  to  the  independ- 
ence of  the  judiciary  established  at  the  end  of  the 
17th  century,  but  he  does  not  dwell  upon  it.  That 
was  a  most  important  step  in  making  good  the 
guaranties  of  the  Bill  of  Rights.  Under  the 
Stuarts,  and  indeed  in  all  previous  reigns,  judges 
had  been  appointed  to  serve  during  the  pleasure 
of  the  King.  Under  the  influence  of  the  revolu- 
tion of  1688,  and  by  the  acts  of  settlement  soon 
thereafter  passed,  judges  ceased  to  hold  oflice  dur- 
ing the  pleasure  of  the  King,  and  were  given  a 
tenure  during  their  good  behavior.  At  first  this 
tenure  was  only  during  the  life  of  the  King  whose 


12  English  Leadership 

commission  they  held,  but  by  a  subsequent  legisla- 
tion in  one  of  the  Georges,  the  tenure  was  made 
independent  of  the  King  appointing,  and  they 
served,  as  they  now  do,  for  life.  The  effect  of 
this  independent  tenure  upon  the  judiciary  of  Eng- 
land can  hardly  be  overestimated.  There  is  noth- 
ing more  greatly  to  the  honor  of  English  civiliza- 
tion than  the  high  character  of  England's  courts 
and  the  confidence  that  the  English  people  have  in 
the  ability,  learning  and  impartiality  of  their 
judges.  The  jury  system  gives  to  the  people  the 
certainty  that  in  issues  of  life  and  liberty  an  im- 
partial panel  of  the  countrymen  of  the  accused 
will  be  summoned  to  take  part  in  the  decision  of 
his  case,  and  in  England  the  jury  system,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  judges  of  the  court,  has  had  won- 
derful success.  Justice  is  not  delayed,  the  criminal 
laws  are  enforced  with  admirable  dispatch  and  the 
results  command  the  confidence  of  the  nation.  Of 
course  this  has  not  always  been  so.  Even  in  Eng- 
land the  administration  of  justice  came  to  be  laden 
with  abuses  of  delay  and  heavy  costs  so  that  when 
Queen  Victoria  came  to  the  throne  one  could  not 
speak  of  the  working  of  the  English  administra- 
tion of  justice  in  any  such  terms  as  I  have  used. 
If  one  would  see  how  deplorable  was  the  condition 
of  the  courts  upon  the  accession  of  Victoria,  he 


English  Political  Genius         13 

should  read  Lord  Bowen's  description  of  the  im- 
provement in  the  administration  of  justice  during 
the  half  centuiy  celebrated  in  the  Queen's  Jubilee. 
The  reforms  were  effected  by  the  leaders  of  the 
bar  and  the  judiciary,  and  now  there  is  no  system 
of  courts  in  the  world  so  admirably  conducted  as 
that  we  find  in  England.  She  continues  to  set  a 
model  before  the  world  in  this  regard. 

One  of  the  lessons  that  must  be  taught,  however, 
in  respect  to  English  liberty,  English  representa- 
tive institutions,  and  English  administration  of  jus- 
tice, is  that  the  success  of  them  all  must  rest  on  the 
political  capacity  of  the  individuals  of  the  English 
people  to  understand  their  institutions,  to  realize 
their  responsibility  for  the  successful  working  of 
them,  and  to  feel  that  the  Government  under 
which  they  are  living  is  their  government  and  en- 
tails upon  them  the  duty  of  keeping  it  pure  and 
clean  and  effective.  Those  of  us  who  are  properly 
enthusiastic  and  grateful  for  the  inestimable  boon 
of  civil  liberty  of  English  origin  that  we  enjoy  are 
apt  to  assume  that  it  is  a  benefit  which  can  be  con- 
ferred upon  any  people  and  enjoyed  by  them  to 
their  very  great  advantage,  no  matter  what  their 
history,  their  education  and  their  previous  expe- 
rience in  government.  This  is  a  fundamental  er- 
ror.   Self-government  is  a  boon  which  people  must 


14  English  Leadership 

properly  prepare  themselves  to  carry  on.  As 
President  Wilson  has  said  in  his  book  on  "Con- 
stitutional Government,"  self-government  is  char- 
acter and  can  only  be  acquired  after  hard  experi- 
ence in  attempting  it.  Take  the  peculiar  institu- 
tion of  English  liberty — the  petit  jury.  It  is  ex- 
ceedingly hard  to  inject  that  into  the  judicial  sys- 
tem of  a  country  brought  up  under  Spanish  ante- 
cedents and  traditions,  and  especially  in  a  commu- 
nity like  the  Philippines  conducted  as  a  Spanish 
colony.  Were  intelligent  Filipinos  summoned  to 
a  jury  to  sit  in  a  case,  they  would  doubtless  under- 
stand the  evidence  and  possibly  reach  a  sound  con- 
clusion as  to  the  bearing  of  the  evidence,  but  what 
they  would  fail  to  bring  into  the  jury  box  would 
be  the  feeling  of  responsibility  with  which  they 
should  approach  the  decision  of  the  question. 
They  would  not  appreciate  that  the  proceeding 
was  part  of  their  government,  that  they  were  of 
the  government,  and  that  the  proper  administra- 
tion of  justice  was  something  for  which  they  were 
individually  responsible.  They  would  look  upon 
the  government  as  something  different  from  them- 
selves, something  antagonistic  to  themselves,  some- 
thing which  must  look  out  for  itself  in  achieving 
results  in  its  administration.  A  law-breaker  es- 
caping in  such  a  country  would  never  be  appre- 


English  Political  Genius         15 

hended  by  the  unofficial  members  of  the  commu- 
nity. They  would  regard  that  as  the  business  of 
the  sheriff  or  of  a  police  officer.  They  could  not 
understand  the  obligation  of  the  hue  and  cry  for 
the  capture  of  an  escaping  thief  or  murderer.  They 
would  look  upon  the  contest  with  indifference. 
Such  an  attitude  toward  government  deeply  in- 
grained by  its  history  and  treatment  of  its  people 
must  be  overcome  before  the  people  may  success- 
fully take  part  in  the  administration  of  justice 
through  a  jury  system  and  before  indeed  they  can 
hope  successfully  to  make  a  representative  govern- 
ment useful  to  the  people.  Therefore,  when  we 
speak  of  a  Republic  in  China  or  a  Republic  in 
Russia,  we  must  be  patient  with  its  faults,  with  its 
deficiencies,  with  its  failures,  and  must  realize  that 
only  by  the  hardest  kinds  of  knocks  can  a  people 
learn  the  character  needed  to  make  self-govern- 
ment a  success.  This  Is  not  an  argument  against 
their  beginning.  This  Is  not  an  argument  for  the 
maintenance  of  tyranny  anywhere,  but  it  is  an  ap- 
peal to  reason  and  common  sense  in  our  optimistic 
expectations  as  to  working  of  a  popular  represen- 
tative government  by  a  people  who  are  utterly 
Ignorant  of  self-restraint  and  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity.   These  the  great  body  of  a  people  must  have 


i6  English  Leadership 

before  the  benefits  of  self-government  can  be  really 
manifested  and  enjoyed. 

A  characteristic  of  the  growth  of  English  lib- 
erty and  of  free  representative  institutions  was  its 
conservative  character.  When  a  reform  was  to  be 
brought  about,  when  an  evil  presented  itself  so 
acutely  that  something  had  to  be  done  to  remedy 
it,  Englishmen  did  not  break  down  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  their  government  and  rebuild  it.  They 
merely  added  something  to  the  structure  to  supply 
the  need  or  repair  the  defect.  That  is  the  reason 
why  their  statutes  are  nothing  but  patchwork. 
That  is  the  reason  why  such  written  laws  do  not 
commend  themselves  to  any  lawgiver  trained  un- 
der the  civil  law  system ;  but  that  is  also  the  reason 
why  they  work.  The  changes  have  been  based  on 
the  existing  structure  and  system  and  the  variation 
is  as  slight  as  the  purpose  of  it  requires.  The  re- 
sulting edifice  is  like  an  old  house  added  to  as  the 
needs  of  the  family  require  it,  as  the  attacks  of 
the  elements  show  its  weaknesses,  as  modern  neces- 
sities develop  its  needed  changes.  The  lines  of 
such  a  house  do  not  satisfy  the  eye  of  the  trained 
architect,  but  for  living  purposes  the  association 
between  the  past  and  the  present  strengthens  the 
affection  of  the  owner  for  the  house  and  gives  to 
his  living  therein  the  ineffable  comfort  and  loyalty 


English  Political  Genius         17 

of  tradition  and  association.  The  House  of  Lords 
has  been  an  excrescence  on  the  body  democratic  of 
the  English  Government.  It  has  at  times  furnished 
what  our  written  constitution  interpreted  by  the 
Supreme  Courts  gives  to  us.  The  House  of  Lords 
has  taken  under  its  own  control  the  maintenance 
of  the  British  constitution.  Its  hereditary  and 
Tory  proclivities  have  made  it  a  certain  refuge 
where  popular  storms  have  threatened  a  breach. 
But  by  reason  of  its  reactionary  opposition  to  re- 
form bills,  to  home  rule,  to  the  continued  expres- 
sion of  popular  will  in  House  of  Commons  ma- 
jorities, the  people  of  England  finally  became  con- 
vinced that  a  change  was  necessary.  Now  in 
France,  or  in  other  countries  where  popular 
changes  are  possible,  the  House  of  Lords  would 
have  been  abolished — not  so  in  England.  In  191 1 
a  change  was  made,  and  possibly  more  radical 
changes  were  foreshadowed.  But  the  House  of 
Lords  was  retained.  It  must  act  upon  money  bills 
within  a  month  after  their  reception  or  they  be- 
come law,  and  if  after  two  years  and  three  sessions 
of  Parliament  the  Lords  fail  to  pass  a  bill  which 
has  passed  the  Commons  three  times,  it  becomes  a 
law  upon  the  royal  signature.  The  royal  signa- 
ture is  another  instance  of  the  way  in  which  old 
forms  are  retained  which  have  lost  their  substan- 


i8  English  Leadership 

tial  significance.  A  bill  which  passes  both  Houses 
of  Parliament  needs  the  royal  signature  to  make 
it  law.  It  has  not  been  withheld  for  200  years, 
although  the  letter  of  English  law  seems  to  give 
the  sovereign  the  right  to  sign  or  not  as  he  chooses. 
Should  he  fail  to  sign  to-day,  however,  it  would 
deprive  him  of  his  throne. 

The  government  of  England  was  united  with 
that  of  Scotland  and  with  that  of  Ireland  into  the 
government  of  Great  Britain.  The  union  with 
Scotland  has  been  completely  successful.  Scotland 
has  retained  her  courts,  her  religion  and  her  local 
community  governments,  and  has  found  it  possible 
to  live  contentedly  under  a  Parliament  in  which  it 
has  had  its  proportionate  representation  of  mem- 
bers. The  relations  between  England  and  Ireland, 
however,  up  to  the  last  half  century  were  one  of 
the  great  blots  upon  English  history.  The  differ- 
ence in  race  and  the  difference  in  religion  united 
to  create  a  misgovernment  of  Ireland  by  England 
down  to  recent  times,  so  unlike  England's  treat- 
ment of  her  colonies  since  the  American  Revolution 
as  to  call  down  upon  her  statesmen  the  severest 
criticism.  The  natural  economic  disadvantages  of 
Ireland  were  greatly  increased  by  restrictive  trade 
legislation  in  favor  of  English  manufactures  and 
agriculture  impoverished  the  Irish  tenant  farmer 


English  Political  Genius         19 

and  limited  Irish  manufactures  to  such  a  degree 
that  the  desertion  of  Ireland  by  all  her  people  who 
could  migrate  was  the  only  logical  result.  In  the 
last  half  century,  however,  English  statesmen  have 
sought  to  reverse  this  policy  and  to  encourage 
Irish  agriculture  and  Irish  industries  by  govern- 
mental aid.  In  no  country  has  such  governmental 
aid  been  as  successful  as  it  has  been  in  Ireland, 
and  it  is  noteworthy  that  during  this  war,  from  an 
economic  standpoint,  the  Irish  farmer  is  more 
prosperous  than  the  English  farmer.  But  mean- 
time, through  the  stubbornness  and  unreasonable 
attitude  of  a  comparatively  small  part  of  the  Irish 
people,  the  Home  Rule  and  local  self-government 
which  the  Irish  people  have  demanded,  and  which 
the  English  people  have  been  willing  to  grant,  has 
been  halted,  and  even  In  this  great  war,  which 
should  awalcen  in  Irishmen  the  patriotic  support 
of  the  English  and  the  world  cause,  a  feeling  of 
bitterness  has  again  grown  up  against  the  British 
Government,  which  adds  another  grievous  burden 
to  its  already  many  burdens  in  fighting  this  war. 
The  Irish  question  has  been  like  the  shirt  of 
Nessus  for  England,  and  she  Is  paying  now  in 
the  bitterest  form  the  penalty  for  her  injustice 
of  the  past. 

In  her  colonial  governments,   England  stands 


20  English  Leadership 

unrivaled  in  her  success  in  the  world.  They  are 
of  two  kinds.  One  is  of  those  communities  settled 
by  the  British  in  Canada,  in  Australia,  in  New  Zea- 
land, South  /Vfrica — self-governing  dominions  that 
have  not  severed  their  relation  to  the  mother  coun- 
try and  have  enjoyed  in  the  arrangement  of  their 
own  affairs  an  independence  wisely  granted  by  the 
home  government,  so  that  as  the  tie  between  them 
has  grown  lighter,  the  mutual  affection  has  been 
strengthened.  No  higher  or  better  evidence  could 
be  given  of  this  than  the  wonderful  sacrifices  that 
Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  South  Africa 
have  made  in  this  world  war  in  defense  of  their 
mother  country.  It  is  one  of  the  most  inspiring 
features  of  the  war  to  note  how  strong  this  bond 
between  England  and  her  daughters  has  been,  and 
how  nobly  they  have  responded  to  their  filial  ob- 
ligation. 

England  began  her  colonial  enterprises  with  the 
same  spirit  as  that  of  other  nations,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  extending  her  trade  and  exploiting  the 
colonies,  which  she  created  either  by  conquest  or 
settlement.  We  of  the  United  States  may  claim 
to  have  taught  England  a  wiser  and  a  more  al- 
truistic policy  in  dealing  with  her  dependencies. 
When  she  attempted  to  circumscribe  the  activities, 
energies  and  enterprise  of  her  own  children  on  this 


English  Political  Genius        21 

continent,  and  sought  to  tax  them,  without  a  voice 
in  their  government,  she  found  the  same  stuff  in 
them  of  which  her  own  people  had  given  so  many 
evidences  in  times  past.  The  colonies  loved  the 
mother  country,  were  really  attached  to  it,  and 
only  made  their  declaration  of  independence  after 
a  year  of  revolt.  The  English  people  were  them- 
selves divided  in  respect  to  the  wisdom  of  their 
policy,  and  it  is  the  truth  to  say  that  the  Americans 
were  forced  to  revolution  through  the  tyrannical 
narrowness  and  blind  obstinacy  of  George  III, 
who,  exercising  his  control  of  Parliament  by  cor- 
ruption and  patronage,  was  able  to  carry  this  fatal 
policy  through  to  its  logical  conclusion.  Chatham, 
Fox  and  Burke  and  other  far-sighted  British  states- 
men saw  the  blunder,  but  could  not  avert  it.  There 
has  been  a  discussion  as  to  whether  England  did 
change  her  colonial  policy  as  a  result  of  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  this  case 
the  argument  post  hoc  procter  hoc  is  a  legitimate 
one,  and  that  no  matter  what  the  detailed  study  of 
the  local  currents  of  politics  may  indicate,  the  les- 
son in  the  severance  of  the  United  States  from 
Great  Britain  manifested  itself  in  all  the  action  of 
England  thereafter  toward  her  colonies.  Her  con- 
sideration for  the  French  Canadians,  her  very  lib- 
eral treatment  of  Canada  in  its  growth  to  its  pres- 


22  English  Leadership 

ent  national  proportions,  and  her  generous  support 
of  the  somewhat  radical  political  development  of 
Australia  and  New  Zealand,  are  illustrations.  Her 
not  altogether  consistent  policy  in  South  Africa 
has  finally  flowered  into  one  of  wisdom  and  gen- 
erosity after  a  grievous  war  in  respect  to  which 
her  motives  were  misrepresented,  and  into  which 
she  was  plunged  by  the  unjust  and  oppressive 
policy  of  the  Boer  Government  toward  many  of 
her  own  subjects  engaged  in  the  development  of 
all  that  territory.  A  study  of  the  British  North 
America  Act,  the  Australian  constitution,  and  the 
act  constituting  the  British  South  African  Govern- 
ment, and  a  comparison  of  these  fundamental  in- 
struments with  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  is  interesting  to  show  the  influence  of  the 
British  Constitution  and  of  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion upon  these  young  Republics,  and  to  demon- 
strate the  wise  absence  on  the  part  of  the  Home 
British  Government  of  any  effort  to  restrain  the 
political  proposals  of  a  majority  of  the  people  in 
each  Dominion.  The  actual  governmental  con- 
nection between  these  Dominions  and  the  Home 
Government  has  been  diminished  to  small  propor- 
tions. The  Home  Government  sends  to  each  a 
representative,  who  is  the  nominal  chief  executive, 
and  under  whom  the  local  Premier  and  Cabinet, 


English  Political  Genius        23 

selected  by  the  legislative  body,  actually  administer 
affairs.  There  is  usually  an  appeal  as  of  course 
from  the  decision  of  the  highest  courts  in  the 
Dominions  to  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  England,  but  even  this  in  some  cases, 
as  in  Australia,  is  left  in  an  important  class  of 
cases  to  the  discretion  of  the  court  to  be  appealed 
from.  The  Home  Government  retains,  of  course, 
control  in  foreign  affairs,  but  wherever  the  sep- 
arate or  local  interests  of  the  Dominion  are  af- 
fected, the  custom  now  has  grown  to  be  to  give 
representation  in  the  negotiation  to  the  Dominion 
concerned,  and  rarely,  if  ever,  to  conclude  negotia- 
tions without  the  consent  of  that  Dominion.  The 
dream  of  many  British  statesmen  is  Imperial  Fed- 
eration, which  shall  increase  in  Imperial  matters 
the  direct  participation  of  the  Dominions.  This 
is  in  the  process  of  formation,  and  the  Dominions 
have  given  such  an  earnest,  by  their  great  and  pa- 
triotic sacrifices  in  this  war,  of  their  interest  in  the 
Enghsh  Empire  and  their  contribution  to  its 
strength,  that  we  may  expect  the  settlement  of  the 
war  to  be  followed  by  some  important  changes — 
changes  which  will  give  them  a  more  direct  voice 
in  the  British  Empire  than  they  now  have  by  statu- 
tory or  constitutional  provision.  In  the  construc- 
tion of  the  government  of  these  Dominions  by  the 


24  English  Leadership 

people  themselves,  with  the  consent  of  the  home 
country,  the  principles  of  free  representative  insti- 
tutions and  the  guarantees  of  British  civil  liberty 
have  been  made  part  of  the  web  and  woof  of  the 
life  of  these  subjects  of  the  British  King.  And 
even  as  in  French  Canada,  where  the  civil  law  ob- 
tained and  such  guarantees  were  unknown  under 
the  French  home  government,  they  were  fully  ex- 
tended under  the  aegis  of  the  British  constitution. 

The  French  and  Spanish  and  German  colonies 
were  governed  from  the  colonial  office  in  Paris, 
Madrid  or  Berlin,  and  have  always  been  so, 
though  the  French  colonial  policy,  far  more  suc- 
cessful than  that  of  the  others,  has  been  liberalized 
of  late  years  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  her  col- 
onies. 

In  addition  to  these  great  republican  dominions 
still  acknowledging  allegiance  to  Great  Britain,  she 
has  a  large  number  of  Crown  colonies,  of  which 
India  is  the  greatest.  In  these  colonies  she  is  en- 
gaged in  the  business  of  governing  native  and  back- 
ward peoples.  The  300,000,000  of  India,  di- 
vided among  Mohammedan,  Buddhist  and  other 
eastern  religions,  have  made  a  problem  of  govern- 
ment most  difficult  of  solution.  When  England 
wrested  control  of  India  from  France,  in  the  Seven 
Years'  War,  under  Pitt,  she  found  kingdoms  and 


English  Political  Genius        25 

peoples  in  a  constant  state  of  war.  Under  her 
East  India  Company  much  wrong  was  done,  and 
much  plundering  in  the  name  of  that  company. 
Gradually  she  restored  peace,  gradually  with  the 
transfer  from  the  East  India  Company  to  the 
Crown,  the  spirit  of  government  in  India  im- 
proved, and  so,  with  a  comparatively  small  mili- 
tary force,  England  has  maintained,  for  now  150 
years,  her  power  in  India.  The  antagonisms  be- 
tween the  followers  of  Mohammed  and  Buddha 
have  doubtless  contributed  to  the  solution  of  the 
problem,  because  each  prefers  the  rule  of  Christian 
Great  Britain  to  the  rule  of  either.  England  has 
been  charged  with  exploiting  India  for  her  own 
trade  and  benefit.  That  this  was  so  in  the  past  is 
probably  true,  but  that  her  policy  for  years  past 
has  been  one  of  great  care  of  Indian  interests,  the 
fair  commentator  must  admit.  England  has  main- 
tained her  power  in  India,  and  maintains  it  to-day 
because  of  the  confidence  of  those  governed  in  her 
administration  of  justice.  The  Oriental  peoples 
under  her  rule  in  India  would  not  trust  a  system 
of  justice  administered  wholly  by  their  own  peo- 
ple, but  they  have  been  taught  by  a  century  of  ex- 
perience that  in  an  English  court,  and  with  an 
English  judge,  justice  Is  not  a  mere  theory  and  an 


2(i  English  Leadership 

empty  declaration,  but  a  real  purpose  and  a  real 
result. 

l^he  good  that  England  has  conferred  on  the 
world  by  her  government  of  India  cannot  be  over- 
estimated. The  extending  of  civilized  life  and  its 
maintenance  throughout  that  great  empire  is 
largely  due  to  her  and  her  statesmen.  She  has 
successfully  maintained  there  a  League  to  Enforce 
Peace.  She  has  dealt  liberally  and  tactfully  with 
the  customs  and  prejudices  and  religions  of  the 
people.  Never  until  recently,  however,  have  her 
statesmen  thought  it  wise  to  extend  any  measure 
of  self-government  to  the  Indian  people.  They 
have  been  slow  to  offer  the  means  of  education  to 
these  hundreds  of  millions  under  them.  Now  they 
are  setting  out  on  a  different  policy,  slowly  and 
conservatively,  as  Englishmen  move  in  political 
matters,  but  with  more  wisdom  perhaps  in  this  re- 
gard than  we. 

The  effect  of  the  American  policy  in  the  Philip- 
pines has  been  marked  In  India  and  has  had  an 
influence  upon  the  liberal  English  Government  in 
that  country.  In  the  Philippines  we  took  over  the 
Government  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  educat- 
ing the  Filipinos  and  fitting  them  for  self-govern- 
ment, and  there  was,  in  my  judgment,  every  augury 
of  ultimate  success,  provided  we  did  not  force  mat- 


English  Political  Genius        27 

ters,  provided  we  did  not  extend  power  to  the 
Filipino  politician  too  rapidly,  and  provided  we  re- 
tained in  the  government  of  the  Philippines  the 
body  of  trained  American  civil  servants  than  whom 
there  were  no  better  anywhere.  It  is  impossible  to 
train  for  complete  self-government  the  genera- 
tion of  Filipinos  which  lived  under  and  felt  the  In- 
fluence of  Spanish  social  and  political  views  and 
Spanish  political  methods.  Time  was  needed  to 
teach  the  Filipinos  the  English  language  that  they 
might,  through  that  as  their  speaking  and  reading 
tongue,  acquire  from  American  literature  and 
newspapers  a  knowledge  of  free  Institutions.  To 
do  this  doubtless  two  generations  would  be  re- 
quired. But  Ame-rlca  has  given  the  Filipinos  not 
more  than  half  a  generation  for  this  purpose,  and 
with  the  surrender  of  power  it  has,  In  my  opinion, 
parted  forever  with  the  opportunity  to  make  suc- 
cessful one  of  the  most  interesting  experiments  in 
preparation  of  an  Oriental  people  for  self-govern- 
ment that  world  history  has  ever  presented.  We 
may  be  sure  that  the  far-seeing  statesmen  of 
Great  Britain  will  profit  by  our  blunder  In  this  re- 
gard, and  that  in  their  extension  of  self-govern- 
ment to  the  East  Indians  they  will  go  forward 
slowly  and  with  a  due  regard  to  the  actual  progress 
of  the  people  and  their  slowly  growing  capacity. 


28  English  Leadership 

Mr.  Larned,  while  he  admits  the  strong  quali- 
ties of  the  Teuton  nature  in  the  early  English, 
and  attributes  to  these  traits  something  of  the  won- 
derful results,  the  causes  of  which  he  has  been 
tracing,  is  disposed  to  minimize  their  influence 
upon  the  development  of  free  representative  in- 
stitutions and  civil  liberty  in  England  in  compari- 
son with  the  fortunate  circumstances  which  he  so 
luminously  arrays  and  describes.  I  don't  know 
that  it  is  of  any  particular  value  or  moment  to 
attempt  an  apportionment  of  credit  for  results  in 
a  period  of  twelve  centuries  to  human  purpose  and 
character  on  the  one  side,  and  to  fortuitous  circum- 
stances, on  the  other.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  orig- 
inal rude  strength  of  the  Teutonic  peoples,  with 
the  environment  of  the  English,  has  made  them  a 
people  leading  the  world  in  the  cause  of  civil  lib- 
erty and  popular  institutions  of  government,  and 
these  have  in  turn  given  to  the  English  people  a 
strength  of  national  character  and  a  sense  of 
world  responsibility  which  have  prompted  them 
in  two  great  crises  in  the  world's  history  to  take 
over  the  burden  of  saving  it  from  military  tyranny 
and  all  the  ills  that  would  follow.  No  one  can 
study  the  history  of  the  French  Revolution,  the 
permanent  benefits  of  which  every  student  of  his- 
tory must  recognize,  without  realizing  that  the 


English  Political  Genius         29 

rescue  of  the  world  from  the  military  tyranny  to 
which  its  excess  by  reaction  led  on  was  ultimately 
defeated  by  English  pluck  and  English  determina- 
tion. The  younger  Pitt  died  in  the  dreadful 
shadow  of  the  battle  of  Austerlitz,  when  the  sun 
of  that  day  seemed  to  crown  the  permanent  glory 
of  a  military  dictatorship  of  the  world.  But  Pitt's 
purpose  was  taken  up  by  his  successors,  by  Can- 
ning and  others,  and  through  the  military  skill  and 
sturdy  high  sense  of  duty  of  Nelson  and  Welling- 
ton, the  greatest  military  leader  of  the  world  was 
brought  to  end  his  days  in  miserable  captivity  on 
an  isolated  rock  in  the  Atlantic.  Not  that  Eng- 
land did  all  this,  but  it  was  the  constancy  of  Eng- 
land's purpose,  the  willingness  of  the  English  peo- 
ple to  sacrifice  men  and  treasure,  and  their  intelli- 
gent sense  of  responsibility  that  made  the  forma- 
tion of  the  various  alliances  before  whom  Na- 
poleon had  ultimately  to  bow  the  knee,  possible. 
And  so  to-day,  while  every  one  admires  the  calm 
courage  and  the  inspiring  gallantry  with  which  the 
French  people  have  met  the  onslaught  of  the  brutal 
military  autocracy  of  Germany  in  its  quest  for  the 
overlordship  of  the  world,  no  one  can  justly  deny 
to  Great  Britain  her  great  agency  in  gathering  to- 
gether the  forces  making  for  the  defeat  of  Ger- 


30  English  Leadership 

many.  The  load  she  has  had  to  carry  can  hardly 
be  overstated.  She  has  not  been  subject  to  the 
dreadful  devastation  of  an  important  part  of  her 
rich  and  industrial  territory,  as  France  has, 
but  she  has,  as  France  has,  offered  up  the  flower 
of  her  youth  in  this  war.  With  her  great  navy 
she  has  put  an  insuperable  obstacle  to  German  am- 
bitions. She  was  as  unprepared  for  land  war  as 
the  United  States  was  when  it  came  into  the  strug- 
gle, and  she  has  in  England  and  in  Scotland  raised 
an  army  so  large  that  if  we  in  the  United  States 
were  to  make  equal  effort,  it  would  give  us  a  mili- 
tary force  of  15,000,000  of  men.  She  has  carried 
on  this  war  with  Ireland  refusing  its  proportion- 
ate support  and  requiring  something  of  British 
strength  to  restrain  revolt.  For  nearly  four  years 
she  had  to  bear  with  the  neutrality  of  the  United 
States,  though  realizing  that  she  was  fighting  the 
battles  of  that  former  daughter  of  hers.  And  she 
has  done  these  things  with  a  modesty  in  respect  to 
her  effort  that  is  noteworthy.  To  France,  to  the 
people  of  her  dominions,  to  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  to  the  Navy  of  the  United  States, 
to  the  soldiers  of  the  United  States,  she  accords 
all  praise;  only  once  in  a  while,  as  in  the  wonder- 
ful speech  of  her  Premier,  Lloyd  George,  of  Au- 


English  Political  Genius        31 

gust  7th,  does  she  make  clear  in  a  moderate  state- 
ment what  she  has  done.  That  brilliant  leader  set 
out  her  sacrifices  and  her  achievements  without 
boasting,  but  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  a  due  sense 
of  proportion  to  the  great  and  controlling  part 
that  she  is  playing  in  the  war. 

It  is  true  that  we  of  the  United  States  are  to 
win  this  war,  but  we  are  to  win  it  only  in  the  sense 
that  a  great  military  reserve,  withheld  from  the 
battle  and  ultimately  brought  in  fresh  and  strong, 
and  unaffected  by  previous  strain  and  loss,  may 
carry  the  enemy's  defenses  and  put  him  to  flight. 
In  the  measure  of  credit  for  such  a  victory,  he  who 
would  ignore  the  debt  of  gratitude  due  to  the 
forces  who  during  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day 
have  maintained  the  battle  and  created  the  situa- 
tion in  which  the  reserves  can  win,  would  indeed 
be  an  unjust  historian.  In  view,  therefore,  of 
what  Britain  has  done  and  is  doing  for  the  world 
in  the  cause  of  freedom  and  popular  representa- 
tive institutions,  not  only  by  making  governments 
which  work  and  preserve  a  consistency  between 
efliciency  and  justice  in  government  and  the  real 
rule  of  the  people,  but  also  in  striking  hard 
the  blow  needed  to  subdue  abhorrent  tyranny 
prompted  by  the  lust  of  universal  power,  Britain 
has  vindicated  the  beneficent  influence  of  free  in- 


32  English  Leadership 

stitutions  upon  the  spirit  and  usefulness  of  her  peo- 
ple. But  for  them  she  could  not  and  would  not 
have  done  for  the  world  what  she  has  done  in  the 
cause  of  human  civilization. 


ENGLISH  LEADINGS  IN  MODERN 
HISTORY 

J.  N.  Earned 


ENGLISH   LEADINGS   IN    MODERN 
HISTORY 

Conspicuously,  before  everything  else,  the 
English  have  been  leaders  in  the  political  eivihza- 
tion  of  the  world.  Every  notable  feature  of  dif- 
ference between  the  modern  and  the  ancient  or- 
ganizations and  institutions  of  government  bears 
the  stamp  of  an  English  origin  or  an  English  shap- 
ing into  its  practicable  form.  All  civilized  nations, 
to-day,  have  accepted  or  are  accepting  English 
solutions  of  the  problem  of  government  by  the 
will  or  with  the  consent  of  the  governed.  Popu- 
lar government  by  representation,  deputized  de- 
mocracy, constitutionalized  authority, — these  are 
almost  universal  in  the  social  order  of  the  present 
day,  because  Englishmen  found  the  way  to  success 
in  them  and  showed  it  to  the  rest  of  mankind. 
Why  have  they  been  the  people  to  do  these  things? 
They  are  not  of  a  distinct  race.  They  hold  no 
gifts  of  faculty  or  power  that  are  peculiar  to  their 
blood.  Their  near  kinsfolk,  of  the  great  Teutonic 
family,   are  all  around  them  in  western  Europe; 

35 


36  English  Leadership 

they  have  shared  the  same  historic  life  of  me- 
diaeval and  modern  times;  and  many  of  those  kins- 
folk were  long  before  the  English  in  turning  from 
predatory  and  barbarizing  to  industrious  and  civ- 
ilizing pursuits.  In  the  general  Teutonic  character 
there  are,  without  doubt,  some  faculties  and  some 
moral  qualities  that  account  for  the  development 
of  our  modern  institutions  of  representative  gov- 
ernment somewhere  within  that  family  of  peoples, 
rather  than  in  any  other  racial  group.  It  furnished 
the  necessary  stability  of  feeling  and  gravity  of 
thinking;  it  gave  the  requisite  balance  between 
personal  impulses  and  rational  perceptions  of  so- 
cial need.  But,  so  far  as  can  be  known,  this  prep- 
aration of  character  for  a  new  political  evolution 
of  society  was  originally  just  as  ready  in  the  tribes 
of  the  Franks  when  they  entered  Gaul,  and  in  the 
tribes  of  the  Alamanni  when  they  settled  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  Rhine,  as  it  was  in  the  Angles 
and  the  Saxons  when  their  conquest  of  Britain  was 
made.  More  surely  still,  it  must  have  been  ready 
among  the  Saxon  tribes  that  stayed  upon  the  Elbe, 
not  less  than  among  those  that  went  colonizing 
across  the  North  Sea.  Why  was  it,  then,  that 
representative  institutions  of  government  grew  up, 
from  shire-moot  to  parliament,  in  the  new  home 
and  not  in  the  old  home  of  Saxons,  Angles  and 


English  Leadings  37 

Jutes  ?  Why  in  England  and  not  in  the  kingdoms 
of  the  Franks?  Why  did  the  "commons"  of  Eng- 
land come  into  partnership  with  the  lords  of  the 
realm  in  the  exercise  of  taxing  and  law-making 
powers,  while  the  corresponding  third-estate  of 
continental  western  Europe  was  almost  voiceless 
and  valueless  in  history  till  nearly  eighteen  cen- 
turies of  the  Christian  era  were  passed?  I  have 
said  that  the  explanation  of  this  remarkable  dis- 
tinction of  the  English  can  be  found  as  much  in 
the  circumstances  of  their  history  as  in  capacities 
or  qualities  peculiar  to  themselves;  I  shall  try  to 
make  that  statement  good. 

Repeating  words  which  I  used  once  in  another 
place — "The  fundamental  circumstance,  which 
seems  in  itself  to  half  explain  English  history,  is, 
of  course,  the  insularity  of  the  nation.^  .  .  .  The 
shelter  of  the  island  from  foreign  interference  and 
from  surrounding  perturbations  was  necessary  to 
the  evolution  of  the  representative  system  of  gov- 
ernment, with  supremacy  in  Parliament,  respon- 
sibility in  administration,  security  of  just  independ- 
ence in  courts;  and  not  less  necessary  to  a  persist- 
ing growth  of  the  industries,  the  trade,  and  the 

*  For  discussion  of  the  geographic  factor  in  English  history, 
see  the  essay  on  this  subject  by  Donald  E.  Smith,  in  this  vol- 
ume.— ^Ed. 


38  English  Leadership 

resulting  wealth,  on  which  the  empire  of  Great 
Britain  depends.     In  their 

'fortress,  built  by  Nature  for  herself, 
Against  infection  and  the  hand  of  war 
...  set  in  the  silver  sea, 
Which  serves  it  in  the  office  of  a  wall, 
Or  as  a  moat  defensive  to  a  house, 
Against  the  envy  of  less  happier  lands,' 

the  English  have  rejoiced  in  many  and  great  ad- 
vantages over  every  neighbor,  and  have  used  them 
with  a  capability  that  has  wasted  none.  Protec- 
tion from  invasion  is  not  more  than  half  the 
blessed  service  their  insulating  sea  has  done  them. 
It  has  also  put  a  happy  curb  on  greedy  ambitions 
in  their  ministers  and  kings;  kept  them  for  nearly 
five  hundred  years  from  aggressive  continental 
wars;  moderated  their  share  in  the  frictions,  jeal- 
ousies, neighborhood  rivalries  and  dynastic  en- 
tanglements of  European  politics,  and  in  conse- 
quence has  turned  the  energies  of  their  ambition 
more  profitably  to  the  remoter  fields  of  commerce 
and  colonization.  At  the  same  time,  by  shutting 
out  many  distractions,  it  has  held  their  more  care- 
ful attention  to  domestic  affairs.  It  has  fostered 
self-reliance  in  the  national  spirit,  and  unity  of  be- 
lief in  one  another.  If  it  has  fostered,  too,  some 
narrow  self-sufficiency  and  unteachable  content- 
ment with  English  ways,  even  those  may  have  had 


English  Leadings  39 

value  to  the  nation  in  time  past,  though  losing  their 
value  now.  By  standing  a  little  to  one  side  of  the 
movements  of  thought  and  feehng  In  continental 
Europe,  the  English  have  experienced  a  more  In- 
dependent development  of  mind  and  character, 
tending  sometimes  toward  narrowness,  but  oftener 
to  the  broadening  of  lines." 

A  general  and  definite  tracing,  however,  of 
causes  to  account  for  the  leading  agency  of  the 
English  peoples  In  modern  civilization,  especially 
on  Its  political  side,  must  begin  at  a  time  prior  to 
their  entrance  into  the  Island  of  Great  Britain, — 
prior,  indeed,  to  their  emergence  into  history  as 
a  people  distinctly  known;  It  must  begin,  rather, 
among  obscurely  placed  ancestral  members  of  the 
Teutonic  family  of  tribes. 

Among  these  Teutonic  tribes  as  they  were 
known  to  Tacitus,  In  the  first  century  after  Christ, 
there  seem  to  have  been  germs  of  that  remarkable 
cooperative  combination  of  democracy  with  aris- 
tocracy, which  the  English  have  developed,  in  their 
political  constitution,  to  Its  present  perfected  state. 
There  was  everywhere  a  recognized  nobility  of 
birth,  derived  generally  from  the  fathers  of  each 
settlement,  who  had  shared  in  the  original  par- 
celing of  homesteads,  and  in  the  original  enjoy- 
ment of  communal  rights  to  the  use  of  lands  and 


40  English  Leadership 

woods  which  were  the  property  of  the  tribe  as  a 
whole.  The  families  of  this  social  primacy, — the 
"old  families"  of  each  community, — had  become 
an  ennobled  class,  commanding  the  deference  of 
the  simple  "freemen"  of  the  tribe,  who  repre- 
sented, in  their  parentage  or  in  themselves,  the 
later-comers,  the  parvenus,  whose  admission  to 
homesteads  and  common  rights  had  been  an  act 
of  grace,  so  to  speak,  on  the  part  of  their  prede- 
cessors in  each  village  or  mark.  But  no  political 
superiority  attached  to  this  social  rank;  for  free- 
man and  noble,  in  the  tribal  elections,  cast  equal 
votes.  Apparently  the  elective  chieftainships,  both 
civil  and  military,  went  generally  to  men  of  rank, 
but  often  enough  otherwise  to  show  that  the  offices 
of  magistracy  and  of  leadership  were  all  within 
a  freeman's  reach. 

[This  primitive  stage  was  not  unique  among  the 
Teutons,  but  one  through  which  many  peoples  have 
passed.  A  recent  historian  has  given  a  vivid  de- 
scription of  this  condition  among  the  early  Greeks: 
"By  fraud,  oppression,  unjust  seizure  of  lands, 
union  of  families  in  marriage,  and  many  other 
influences,  the  strong  man  of  ability  and  cleverness 
was  able  to  enlarge  his  lands.  Thus  there  arose  a 
class  of  large  landholders  and  men  of  wealth.  .  .  . 
Wealthy  enough  to  buy  costly  weapons,  with  leis- 


English  Leadings  41 

lire  for  continual  exercise  in  the  use  of  arms,  these 
nobles  became  also  the  chief  protection  of  the 
state  in  time  of  war.  .  .  .  The  country  peasant 
was  obliged  to  divide  the  family  lands  with  his 
brothers.  His  fields  were  therefore  small  and 
he  was  poor.  He  went  about  clad  in  a  goatskin, 
and  his  labors  never  ceased.  Hence  he  had  no 
leisure  to  learn  the  use  of  arms,  nor  any  way  to 
meet  the  expense  of  purchasing  them.  .  .  .  When 
he  attended  the  Assembly  of  the  people  in  the  city, 
he  found  but  few  of  his  fellows  from  the  country- 
side gathered  there — a  dingy  group,  clad  in  their 
rough  goatskins.  The  powerful  Council  in  beauti- 
ful oriental  raiment  was  backed  by  the  whole  class 
of  wealthy  nobles,  all  trained  in  war  and  splendid 
in  their  glittering  weapons.  Intimidated  by  the 
powerful  nobles,  the  meager  Assembly,  which  had 
once  been  a  muster  of  all  the  weapon-bearing  men 
of  the  tribe,  became  a  feeble  gathering  of  a  few 
peasants  and  lesser  townsmen,  who  could  gain  no 
greater  recognition  of  their  old-time  right  of  self- 
government  than  the  poor  privilege  of  voting  to 
concur  in  the  actions  already  decided  upon  by  the 
king  and  the  Council."  ^] 

*  Quoted  from  Robinson  and  Breasted's  Outlines  of  European 
History,  Vol.  I,  pp.  130-2.  For  explanation  of  the  use  of 
brackets,  see  the  Foreword. — Ed. 


42  English  Leadership 

Whether  or  not  the  Teutons  of  the  time  of 
Tacitus  had  gone  far  enough  in  the  practice  of 
popular  election  to  arrive  at  some  beginnings  of 
a  representative  system,  the  diligent  Roman  his- 
torian did  not  find  out.  That  great  political  in- 
vention may  have  had  a  later  origin,  within  the 
long  period  after  Tacitus  that  is  dark  in  Teutonic 
history,  and  especially  dark  in  all  that  touches 
the  internal  life  of  the  race.  It  was  a  period  of 
tremendous  revolutionary  ferment  and  change. 
Great  movements  of  migration  began,  with  the 
massing  of  kindred  tribes  in  powerful  confedera- 
tions, bringing  into  Teutonic  history  nation-like 
names,  of  Franks,  Saxons,  Suevi  (or  Alamanni), 
Goths,  and  other  wandering  hordes.  Then  came 
the  grand  avalanches  of  more  or  less  barbaric 
invasion,  which  overwhelmed  the  empire  of  Rome 
in  the  West.  Of  the  catastrophes  of  the  time  we 
know  something,  hardly  more.  The  conditions 
underneath,  the  forces  at  work,  the  processes  of 
the  marvelous  evolution  of  a  new  historic  life,  are 
almost  wholly  hidden  from  us,  and  likely  never 
to  be  revealed.  Till  the  new  masters  of  Gaul, 
Spain,  and  Britain  had  fairly  finished  their  con- 
quest, and  had  established  for  themselves  a  some- 
what fixed  and  orderly  settlement  in  their  new 
domain,  there  is,  since  the  writings  of  Tacitus,  next 


English  Leadings  43 

to  nothing  of  record  to  denote,  or  even  to  suggest, 
their  political  experiences. 

When  the  light  of  recorded  history  began  to 
touch  them  again,  the  three  tribes  and  parts  of 
tribes  which  had  crossed  the  North  Sea  and  be- 
came Englishmen  caught  its  earliest  faint  gleams 
and  were  brought  most  distinctively  into  view. 
Their  "Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle"  and  some  frag- 
mentary relics  of  their  folk-literature  are  found  to 
be  the  oldest  Teutonic  records  that  had  been  saved. 
Of  the  political  organization  and  of  the  social  state 
in  general  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  more  is  known  than 
of  any  other  division  of  the  great  Teutonic  race. 
The  framework  of  their  communities  in  England, 
as  first  discoverable,  shows  divergence  from  that 
which  Tacitus  described,  but  this  divergence  is 
more  in  details  than  in  substance  and  form.  In  the 
transplantation  of  Teutonic  society  and  institutions 
the  tokens  of  a  natural  evolution  appear  much 
more  traceable  in  England  than  in  Italy  or  Gaul 
or  Spain. 

In  all  cases  the  Teutonic  conquest  had  given  rise 
to  kingship,  and  kingship  had  generated  new  and 
broader  distinctions  of  rank.  In  all  cases,  too, 
wealth  had  gained  and  was  gaining  power,  and  the 
measure  of  wealth  was  the  ownership  of  land. 
Everywhere,  in  England  as  well  as  in  Europe,  the 


44  English  Leadership 

social  tendencies  were  toward  the  uplifting  of  an 
all-dominant  landlord  class,  and  the  corresponding 
depression  of  a  great  body  of  the  people  into  land- 
less and  dependent  folk.  But  in  England,  apparent- 
ly, those  tendencies  were  held  most  and  longest  in 
check;  and  the  strength  of  the  resistance  to  them 
was  in  the  local  organizations  of  society  which  the 
English  were  enabled  by  good  fortune  to  preserve. 
Their  tunscipes,  or  townships,  their  hundreds,  or 
wapentakes,  and  their  shires, — offspring  of  the 
ancient  Teutonic  mark-system, — were  original  and 
lasting  strongholds  of  democracy,  strongholds 
which  time  weakened  but  never  quite  broke  down. 
It  was  in  these  that  the  representative  system 
took  form,  in  these  that  the  political  habit  of 
representation  became  fixed  in  the  English  mind. 
The  tunmoot — the  old  English  town-meeting — 
was  not,  in  itself,  a  representative  moot  but  an 
assembly  of  all  the  freemen  of  the  township;  this 
township,  however,  sent  its  reeve  and  "four  best 
men"  to  represent  it  in  the  moots  of  the  hundred 
and  the  shire.  Thus  far  in  the  making  and  ad- 
ministering of  law, — for  the  moots  did  both, — the 
people  were  represented.  Here,  however,  the  ap- 
plication of  the  principle  ceased;  for  the  national 
assembly — the  witenagemot  (assembly  of  "the 
wise") — was  not   a   representative  body,  but  a 


English  Leadings  45 

council  of  the  greater  officials  surrounding  the 
king, — assumed  to  be  a  royal  selection  of  wise  and 
capable  men.  ^  At  what  period  the  inspired  device 
of  representation  for  the  people  in  the  hundred 
and  shire  moots  had  been  conceived  and  adopted 
cannot  be  known.  Probably  it  antedates  the  mi- 
gration to  Britain,  since  representative  political 
assemblies  found  in  existence  early  on  the  conti- 
nent— though  later  than  their  known  appearance 
in  England — are  not  likely  to  have  sprung  from 
the  borrowing  of  an  English  idea.  No  doubt  they 
were  indigenous  wherever  found  in  mediaeval 
times;  but  the  origin  of  a  representation  of  the 
people  in  governmental  assemblies  must  have  been 
somewhere  within  the  Teutonic  race.  [Nor  could 
the  principle  have  been  copied  from  the  Greeks 
whose  ancient  institutions  were  unknown  to  the 
early  Teutons.]  It  is  one  of  the  priceless  gifts 
from  that  race  to  mankind;  the  gift  of  an  invention 
which  answered  to  profounder  needs  of  humanity 
than  any  ever  fashioned  out  of  pistons  and  wheels. 
That  the  English  people  became  the  special  keepers 
and  perfecters  of  this  great  gift  is  accounted  for 
sufficiently,  as  I  have  said,  by  the  circumstances 
of  their  history,  and  cannot  with  reason  be  ascribed 

*Cf.    Haskins,    The  Normans   in   European  History,   p.    102, 
for  similar  opinion. — Ed, 


46  English  Leadership 

to  anything  of  character  or  genius  that  was  pe- 
culiar to  themselves.  It  was  the  English,  rather 
than  any  of  their  kinsmen,  who  kept  the  sap  of 
democratic  life  in  the  whole  primitive  Teutonic 
polity,  because  in  Britain  it  was  protected  in  a  de- 
gree from  some  of  the  destructive  influences  which 
on  the  Continent  had  withered  it,  root  and  branch. 
The  tribes  of  the  English  conquest  had  experi- 
enced no  foreign  disturbance  of  that  primitive 
polity  before  they  went  to  Britain,  and  they  sub- 
mitted to  no  such  disturbance  of  it  there.  No  in- 
fluence from  the  imperialized  civilization  of  Rome 
had  ever  touched  them  in  their  far-northern  home 
on  the  Continent,  and  whatever  in  Roman  Britain 
might  have  exercised  such  an  influence  upon  them 
was  destroyed  by  their  ruthless  swords.  In  their 
own  social  fabric  they  had  the  germ  of  a  civiliza- 
tion better  than  the  Roman,  but  it  was  only  in  the 
germ.  They  were  barbaric,  predatory,  unsparingly 
destructive  in  the  warfare  they  waged.  So  far 
as  they  subjugated  and  occupied  the  Romanized 
island  of  Britain,  they  seem  to  have  reduced  it, 
as  nearly  as  might  be,  to  the  condition  of  the 
country  they  had  left.  Its  Romano-British  popu- 
lation was  mostly  driven  out  after  stubborn  re- 
sistance, taking  refuge  in  Brittany  across  the  Chan- 
nel, or  in  the  mountains  and  moors  of  Scotland, 


English  Leadings  47 

Cornwall  and  Wales.  The  Roman  cities  were 
destroyed  or  abandoned  to  decay.  In  their  tribal- 
minded  ignorance  and  egotism,  the  conquerors 
found  little  use  for  anything  in  the  arts  or  ideals 
or  modes  and  manners  of  life  that  the  Romans 
had  left  behind.  Since  Christianity  meant  nothing 
to  them  but  an  insulting  hostility  to  the  gods  of 
their  own  mythology,  they  trampled  it  out.  Sub- 
stantially, we  may  say,  on  taking  possession  of 
their  British  dwelling  place,  they  cleared  It  of  its 
former  furnishings,  scrubbed  out  all  removable 
traces  of  the  tenants  they  had  evicted,  and  settled 
themselves  to  reproduce  and  continue,  as  identi- 
cally as  they  could,  the  life  they  had  lived  in  the 
Danish  peninsula  and  on  the  Elbe. 

In  the  continental  provinces  of  Rome  the  Teu- 
tonic conquest  was  attended  by  no  such  sweeping 
expulsion  of  former  inhabitants  and  destruction  of 
Roman  institutions  and  Roman  work, — for  this 
reason:  The  invasions  on  the  Continent  were, 
most  of  them,  a  gradual  and  peaceful  occupation 
of  the  soil  by  large  numbers,  for  the  most  part 
unresisted,  consequently  not  provocative  of  a 
savage  temper  in  the  invaders.  ["There  was  no 
sharp  line^    of  demarcation  between  the  hetero- 

'  Cf.  Robinson's  essay,  "The  Fall  of  Rome,"  in  his  The  New 
History,  pp.  175-194. — Ed. 


48  English  Leadership 

geneous  inhabitants  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the 
Germans,  or  even  the  Huns.  .  .  .  They  mingled 
with  the  Roman  citizens  in  the  same  manner  that 
ahens  mingle  to-day  with  our  people,  anxious  to 
be  reckoned  American  citizens  as  speedily  as  pos- 
sible. There  was  no  lining  up  of  Roman  against 
barbarian;  the  barbarian  gladly  fought  for  the 
Roman  against  his  own  people  and  exhibited  very 
few  traces  of  national  feeling."]  The  attack  upon 
Britain  was  made  by  comparatively  small  inde- 
pendent bands  who  won  their  several  footings  in 
the  land  by  sudden  swift  strokes,  born  of  despera- 
tion and  fiercely  resisted;  such  a  conquest  was  sure 
to  be  destructive  in  its  methods  and  results.  In 
Gaul  and  Italy,  again,  and  largely  in  Spain,  the 
conquest  was  accomplished  or  controlled  in  the 
end  by  half-nationalized  combinations  of  tribes 
which  had  been  near  neighbors  of  the  decaying 
empire,  or  admitted  to  actual  settlement  within  its 
borders,  for  a  century  and  more.  Sometimes  at 
war  with  the  provincial  Romans  and  sometimes 
employed  to  defend  them,  these  Germans  of  the 
Rhine  and  Danube  frontier  had  been,  for  a  num- 
ber of  generations,  so  much  in  contact  with  the 
people  whom  they  finally  subjugated,  and  with  the 
arts  and  refinements  of  Roman  life,  that  they  had 
acquired  a  certain  measure  of  respect  for  both. 


English  Leadings  49 

The  antagonizing  strangeness  of  things  and  people 
which  provoked  the  Saxon  and  Angle  invaders  of 
Britain  could  not  have  been  felt  by  the  Franks 
and  Goths.  The  latter  were  even  professed 
Christians  before  they  entered  the  empire,  and 
the  Franks  became  so  while  their  Gallic  kingdom 
was  in  the  making. 

The  differing  influences  which  came  from  these 
differing  circumstances  of  the  conquest  produced  a 
wide  divergence,  necessarily,  in  social  results.  The 
Franks,  for  example,  were  settled  in  the  midst 
of  a  people  who  must  have  outnumbered  them  con- 
siderably, and  whose  superiority  to  themselves  in 
much  useful  and  desirable  knowledge  they  could 
not  ignore.  By  force  of  arms  they  had  made 
themselves  the  masters  of  these  people,  and  had 
reduced  them,  as  a  body,  no  doubt,  to  dependence 
or  servitude;  but  their  subjects  and  servants  be- 
came their  teachers,  nevertheless,  and  influenced 
them  as  teachers  can.  They  underwent  an  im- 
perializing  education,  which  the  English  invaders 
of  Britain  missed,  and  this  circumstance  prepared 
the  Teutons  on  the  Continent  for  an  easy  abandon- 
ment of  the  democratic  birthrights  of  their  race. 

As  I  have  said,  the  changes  of  social  organiza- 
tion, which  occurred  naturally  in  all  the  new  settle- 


50  English  Leadership 

merits  of  the  migrating  tribes,  tended  everywhere 
toward  the  creation  of  a  dominant  landlord  class 
and  the  consequent  depression  of  the  general  body 
of  the  people.  This  went  with  the  rise  of  mon- 
archy and  the  parceling  of  the  conquered  lands. 
The  same  prestige  and  ascendency  which  raised 
the  leaders  of  the  conquest  to  thrones  gave  them 
also  authority  in  the  division  of  the  territorial 
spoil.  The  important  warriors  of  each  king's  fol- 
lowing would  secure  the  lion's  share;  and,  accord- 
ing to  the  potency  of  his  kingship,  the  king  would 
improve  the  opportunity  for  binding  his  chief  fol- 
lowers to  himself,  by  attaching  to  his  grants  of 
land  obligations  of  homage  and  of  service.  They, 
in  their  turn,  might  distribute  favors  in  a  subdi- 
vision of  these  royal  grants  on  similar  terms.  Ap- 
parently it  was  thus  that  the  mediaeval  system  of 
land-tenure  called  feudal,  with  its  tie  of  vassalage, 
had  its  beginning;  and  it  grew  to  perfection  first 
among  the  Franks,  because  the  primitive  Teutonic 
instincts  which  resisted  it  democratically  were, 
without  doubt,  soonest  lost  among  the  Franks. 
Originally  a  land-system,  it  developed  a  most  mis- 
chievous political  system,  planting  a  territorial 
aristocracy  whose  growth  in  power  very  soon  be- 
came destructive  alike  to  royal  authority  and  to 
popular  freedom.    Beginning  as  a  system  of  tenure 


English  Leadings  SI 

which  affected  only  large  portions  of  the  new  king- 
doms, it  brought  a  pressure  of  lordly  power  to 
bear  against  all  other  land-owning,  until  little  of 
independent  ownership  remained.  What  there 
was  of  protective  and  commanding  power  in  the 
turbulent  society  of  the  time  was  gathered  rapidly 
into  the  hands  of  the  territorial  lords,  and  vas- 
salage became  the  price  of  the  shelter  it  could 
give  and  the  grace  it  could  accord.  The  lesser 
landowners  were  driven,  one  by  one,  to  surrender 
their  independent  titles  and  become  tenants  and 
vassals  of  powerful  men,  or  of  strong  religious 
bodies,  which  also  acquired  an  important  place  in 
the  feudal  scheme. 

There  appears  to  have  been  more  or  less  work- 
ing of  these  processes  in  all  the  regions  of  the 
Teutonic  conquest;  but  nowhere  else  to  the  per- 
fection of  feudalism  that  was  realized  by  the 
Franks.  From  their  domination,  more  than  from 
local  growths,  came  its  ultimate  prevalence  in 
Western  Europe.  By  subjugation  of  the  German 
fatherland  they  carried  it  even  there,  imposing 
it  upon  the  Saxons  of  the  continent  while  the 
Saxons  of  England  were  still  holding  its  growth 
in  check. 

So  far,  a  quite  plain  force  of  circumstances  had 
half  saved  the  English  from  the  feudalizing  drift 


52  English  Leadership 

of  the  time.  Centuries  of  contention  for  suprem- 
acy between  the  small  kingdoms  which  Jutes, 
Saxons  and  Angles  had  seated  separately  in  the 
island  afforded  little  gain  of  prestige  to  royalty 
and  not  much  growth  of  dependent  lordships;  but 
quickly  after  the  ending  of  those  conditions  they 
were  almost  reversed.  The  West  Saxon  Egbert 
and  his  successors,  in  the  sovereignty  of  all  Eng- 
land, were  raised  to  less  importance  in  their  po- 
litical capacity  than  as  the  war-chiefs  of  a  nation 
that  was  fighting  for  its  life.  Early  in  the  line  of 
these  nationalized  chieftains  and  kings  came  Al- 
fred, the  noblest  of  all  crowned  men  in  heroic 
and  kingly  character.  As  a  warrior  he  glorified 
the  crown  he  wore;  as  a  Christian  he  sanctified 
it;  as  a  tireless  toiler  for  the  well-being  and  im- 
provement of  his  people,  he  centered  their  affec- 
tion upon  it.  Kingship,  after  Alfred  had  repre- 
sented it,  must  have  commanded  new  and  larger 
forces  of  influence  in  England,  but  they  worked 
in  social  developments  that  were  far  from  wholly 
good. 

In  the  period  which  followed,  the  English  were 
carried  more  obviously  than  before  in  the  feudal 
direction.  They  were  being  carried  toward  much 
the  same  results,  but  more  slowly  and  by  a  some- 
what different  way.    The  relations  of  dependence 


English  Leadings  53 

among  them  were  not  exactly  those  which  the 
Franks  had  developed;  the  true  vassalage  of 
Frankish  feudalism  may  not  have  been  introduced; 
but  their  lesser  landowners  were  becoming  depend- 
ent tenants  of  the  greater  ones,  and  landless  men 
who  would  have  been  freemen  in  the  olden  time 
were  becoming  serfs.  As  yet,  the  folkmoot  of 
the  townships  and  the  representative  moots  of  the 
hundred  and  the  shire  lived  on,  keeping  something 
of  their  old  function  and  force;  but  by  the  middle 
of  the  eleventh  century  they  seem  to  have  been 
reduced  to  a  feeble  state.  If  nothing  had  inter- 
vened to  interrupt  and  alter  the  processes  that 
were  operating  then,  one  cannot  see  why  the  evo- 
lution of  society  in  England,  during  the  next  half- 
dozen  centuries,  should  have  differed  essentially 
from  that  of  France. 

But  there  was  an  intervention  of  good  fortune, 
which  came  calamitously  disguised.  There  seems 
to  be  no  doubting  that  the  English  were  saved  by 
their  national  overthrow  in  the  Norman  conquest, 
from  a  complete  decay  and  extinction  of  those  old 
local  folk-organisms  which  were  the  ultimate  seat 
of  life  for  all  that  grew  up  in  their  government 
of  constitutional  freedom  and  popular  power. 
This  could  not  have  been  the  result  if  the  Norman 
Duke  William  had  been  a  conqueror  of  the  com- 


54  English  Leadership 

mon  sort,  fashioning  his  stolen  kingdom  with  noth- 
ing of  skill  beyond  the  carving  of  the  sword.  Hap- 
pily for  England  and  for  the  world,  he  was  a 
statesman  in  brain,  as  well  as  an  autocrat  in  will 
and  a  soldier  of  daring  and  adventurous  heart. 
His  ambitions  were  all  selfish,  but  his  selfishness 
was  shrewd,  forethoughtful,  profoundly  wise.  He 
saw  that  the  firm  seating  of  himself  on  the  throne 
he  had  taken  from  the  Saxon  Harold  depended 
more  on  the  future  disposition  of  the  English  than 
on  the  fealty  and  valor  of  his  Norman  support. 
He  saw  that  he  must  not  lean  on  the  latter,  if 
he  would  be  a  king  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name.  The 
Norman  barons  who  had  followed  him  to  England 
with  their  retainers,  and  fought  for  him  at  Senlac, 
were  as  keen  in  self-seeking  amIBitions  as  himself. 
"The  greatest  secular  figure  ^  in  the  Europe  of  his 
day,  he  is  also  one  of  the  greatest  in  the  line  of 
English  sovereigns,  whether  we  judge  him  by 
capacity  for  rule  or  by  the  results  of  his  reign,  and 
none  has  had  a  more  profound  effect  on  the  whole 
current  of  English  history."]  The  conquest  of 
England  was  a  speculative  undertaking  on  the  part 
of  all  who  had  to  do  with  it,  and  the  sharing  of 

*  Cf.  Haskins,  The  Normans  in  European  History,  pp.  11-15, 
53.  Cf.  also  E.  A.  Freeman,  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest 
(third  edition),  Vol.  II,  pp.  164-67. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  55 

profits  and  prizes  was  sure  to  be  a  matter  of 
jealous  dispute.  It  would  be  necessarily  a  shar- 
ing in  the  feudal  mode.  Neither  William  nor  his 
followers  are  likely  to  have  been  able  to  conceive 
the  possibility  of  anything  else.  At  least,  nothing 
else  can  have  been  practicable  in  the  situation  with 
which  the  Conqueror  had  to  deal. 

But,  to  feudalize  England  in  the  completeness 
of  the  system  which  the  Northmen  of  Normandy 
had  taken  over  from  the  Franks  would  be  to  give 
the  Conqueror  a  merely  titular  kingship,  as  empty 
of  real  regality  as  that  of  the  Capetlans  who  wore 
crowns  at  Paris  in  that  day.  Nobody  could  under- 
stand this  fact  better  than  he.  He  had  had  ex- 
perience in  his  feudal  dukedom  quite  sufficient  for 
the  instruction  of  a  political  mind  like  his.  He 
had  fought  down  his  turbulent  feudatories  there 
and  brought  them  to  a  respectful  submissiveness; 
but  how  could  he  plant  the  same  baronage  In  a 
conquered  country,  over  a  subjugated  population, 
duplicating  Its  wealth  and  power,  and  still  rule  It, 
on  the  feudal  footing,  as  he  meant  to  do?  That 
was  the  hard  problem  that  he  undertook  to  solve; 
and  he  solved  it,  as  few  men  could  have  done.  To 
his  keen  practical  sense  two  things  were  clear:  ( i ) 
that  the  feudalism  to  be  organized  In  England 
must  have  as  much  as  possible  of  the  rebellious 


56  English  Leadership 

aptitudes  and  opportunities  of  its  French  constitu- 
tion taken  out  of  it;  and  (2)  that  the  common 
people  of  England  must  be  reconciled  to  his  pos- 
session of  the  crown  of  their  kingdom,  so  far  as 
to  stand  with  him  and  his  house,  against  the  Nor- 
man lords  he  should  put  over  them,  on  issues  that 
were  likely  to  arise  between  the  latter  and  himself. 
His  rare  soundness  of  judgment  and  resolute  en- 
ergy accomplished  both.  On  one  hand  he  pruned 
down  the  feudalism  that  he  laid  on  his  new  sub- 
jects; on  the  other  hand  he  kept  life  in  their  local 
institutions  and  in  their  customary  laws,  which 
meant  to  them  infinitely  more  than  anything  re- 
mote in  the  government  of  the  land  at  large. 

The  feudal  system  that  King  William  construct- 
ed in  England  was  a  piece  of  political  architecture 
very  different  from  that  of  the  Carolinglan  realms. 
Great  fiefs  and  territorial  jurisdictions  which 
crippled  royal  authority  were  in  William's  system 
few  and  far  between.  Large  estates  were,  in  gen- 
eral, a  patchwork  of  pieces,  scattered  widely  apart. 
The  functions  and  importance  of  the  judicial  and 
administrative  officers  of  the  crown  were  syste- 
matically magnified  in  the  whole  organization  of 
government.  Finally,  all  the  landowners  of  sub- 
stance in  England,  whosesover  vassals  they  were, 
were  summoned  before  the  king,  to  become  "his 


English  Leadings  57 

men,"  swearing  "oaths  of  allegiance  that  they 
would  be  faithful  to  him  against  all  others."  Thus 
the  conqueror  leveled  up  and  leveled  down  the 
whole  gradation  of  feudal  fealty,  putting  his  sub- 
jects, great  and  small,  whatever  their  secondary 
vassalage  might  be,  on  one  plane  of  primary  com- 
mon vassalage  and  allegiance  to  himself.  Thus 
he  defeudalized  his  regal  office.  Thus  he  prepared 
the  conditions  for  a  more  nationalized  kingship 
than  any  other  people  in  western  Europe  would 
know  for  centuries  to  come. 

At  the  same  time,  his  measures  on  the  other  line 
of  policy  established  him  and  his  successors  in 
perfect  legitimacy  on  the  English  throne.  He 
claimed  it,  not  by  right  of  conquest,  but  by  legal 
right.  King  Edward  the  Confessor,  he  averred, 
had  promised  the  succession  to  him,  and  Harold, 
while  Earl  of  Wessex,  had  sworn  fealty  to  him 
as  Edward's  heir.  These  pretensions  had  no 
legality,  but  they  had  great  popular  effect;  and 
William  shaped  all  his  proceedings  to  consistency 
with  them.  He  secured  a  formal  election  to  the 
throne  by  what  might  pass  for  a  witenagemot, 
and  a  solemn  coronation  at  Westminster  by  the 
English  Archbishop  of  York.  In  return  William 
swore  to  "hold  fast  to  right  law";  what  is  known 
of  the  legislation  and  jurisprudence  of  his  reign 


58  English  Leadership 

seems  to  show  that  he  meant  the  old  English  law, 
and  that,  in  letter  if  not  in  spirit,  his  oath  was 
fairly  kept.  His  son  Henry,  by  a  charter  which 
became  the  basis  of  the  Magna  Carta  of  the  next 
century,  confirmed  or  reenacted  the  laws  of 
Edward  the  Confessor;  and  it  is  certain  that  the 
Norman  conquest  caused  very  little  change  in  the 
substance  of  English  law,  though  its  administration 
was  greatly  altered  and  improved. 

No  doubt  the  "right  law"  to  which  the  Con- 
queror had  sworn  to  hold  fast  was  painfully 
strained  by  those  cruel  proceedings  which  trans- 
ferred the  great  English  estates  from  native  to 
Norman  hands;  but  the  whole  spoliation  was  ac- 
complished with  a  scrupulous  respect  for  legal 
forms.  The  rightful  king,  it  was  claimed,  coming 
to  crown,  had  found  himself  resisted,  and  the 
penalties  of  treason  had  been  incurred  by  all  who 
failed  to  uphold  his  right.  This  was  the  theory 
which  gave  its  plausible  warrant  to  what  Pro- 
fessor Freeman  has  described  as  "a  system  of  legal 
confiscations  and  legal  grants,  harsh  no  doubt  and 
unrighteous,  but  still  carried  out  strictly  according 
to  the  letter  of  the  law,"  whereby  a  "legal  and 
orderly  transfer  of  lands  and  offices  from  natives 
to  strangers  went  on,  step  by  step,  during  the  whole 
of  William's  reign."     At  the  same  time,  many  of 


English  Leadings  59 

the  native  English  were  permitted  to  redeem  their 
lands  from  forfeiture,  or  to  receive  them  as  a  gra- 
cious new  grant  from  the  king,  and  so  became 
tenants-in-chief  of  the  crown.  Very  soon,  if  not 
immediately,  all  tenants-in-chief, — holders  of  land, 
that  is,  from  no  intermediate  lord,  but  directly 
from  the  king, — acquired  a  political  status  which 
proved  to  be  of  extraordinary  importance  in  the 
constitutional  development  of  the  kingdom,  as  we 
shall  see  later  on. 

Within  a  decade  after  his  landing  in  England 
the  Conqueror  had  convinced  the  greater  body  of 
the  English  people  that  they  served  their  interests 
best  by  upholding  the  royal  authority  which  he 
had  established,  against  the  baronage  that  desired 
to  break  it  down.  "All  the  troubles  of  the  king- 
dom after  A.D.  1075,"  says  Bishop  Stubbs,  "pro- 
ceeded from  the  insubordination  of  the  Normans, 
not  from  attempts  of  the  English  to  dethrone  the 
king."  It  was  by  English  support  that  his  sons, 
both  William  Rufus  and  Henry  I,  won  and  held 
the  crown,  against  their  elder  brother,  Robert, 
whom  the  Normans  in  England  preferred.  Be- 
fore the  death  of  Henry,  the  identification  of  the 
English  nation  with  Its  Norman  royal  dynasty  was 
complete,  and  the  people  were  more  unified  in 
national  feeling  than  ever  before.     The  vigorous, 


6o  English  Leadership 

hard,  ably  selfish  government  of  the  first  William 
and  the  first  Henry,  oppressive  though  it  was  in 
many  ways,  had  been  a  tonic,  a  reviving  stimulant, 
to  the  English  spirit.  The  very  foreignness  of  its 
central  administration  must  have  endeared  the  old 
native  institutions  of  local  government  anew  in 
English  thought  and  feeling;  must  have  reanimated 
the  participation  of  the  people  in  the  moots  or 
courts  of  the  hundred  and  the  shire,  and  reawak- 
ened something  of  the  democratic  instincts  of  the 
elder  time.  How  else  can  we  account  for  the  rapid 
and  unique  development  in  England  of  a  represen- 
tation for  the  people  beyond  those  moots,  and  in 
all  public  action,  both  great  and  small,  which  began 
within  less  than  a  century  after  the  Normans  came 
in?  Certainly  there  is  no  sign  of  progress  to  that 
end  in  the  pre-Norman  period.  Nothing  then 
shows  a  promise  of  growth  from  the  ancient  roots 
of  the  representative  system,  that  would  carry  it 
from  the  shire-moot  to  the  witenagemot,  and  make 
it  dominant  in  the  political  constitution  of  the 
realm.  On  the  contrary,  everything  known  of  the 
conditions  existing  before  William  of  Normandy 
took  the  kingdom  in  hand  is  indicative,  as  I  have 
said,  of  social  processes  that  were  working  the 
destruction  of  popular  rights,  more  slowly,  but  just 
as  surely  as  the  pure  feudalism  of  the  Franks. 


English  Leadings  6i 

The  statesmanship  of  the  Conqueror  put  a  check 
on  these  processes, — by  his  effective  emasculation 
of  the  feudal  system  which  he  himself  introduced; 
by  his  preservation  and  encouragement  of  the  na- 
tive local  institutions  of  the  kingdom ;  and  by  the 
consequent  reanimation  of  English  political  life. 

But  that  was  not  all  that  William  accomplished. 
He  brought  to  the  English  a  new  popular  institu- 
tion, which  appears  to  have  borne  for  their  benefit 
fruits  which  it  never  yielded  elsewhere.  This  was 
the  proceeding  of  "inquest,"  thought  to  be  trace- 
able to  Prankish  origins.  ^  When  royal  rights 
were  in  question  or  royal  interests  concerned,  the 
Carolingian  kings  commissioned  a  certain  number 
of  men  to  ascertain  and  declare  the  facts  involved. 
In  France  nothing  came  from  this  procedure  of 
inquest;  it  exercised  a  royal  privilege  and  died  out. 
But  in  England  it  became  the  germ  of  the  whole 
system  of  inquisition  and  trial  by  jury.  Continuing 
the  work  of  his  Norman  predecessors,  Henry  II 
gave  to  English  law  a  dignity,  a  force  and  a  su- 
premacy which  it  never  lost,  and  seated  it  in  courts 
which  have  been  models  for  the  judicature  of  all 
the  world.     Nor  was  this  the  sole  significance  of 

^  Supported  by  Haskins,  "The  Normans  in  History,"  pp.  109- 
110,  and  by  Pollock  and  Maitland,  "History  of  English  Law," 
Vol,   I,   p.    142. — Ed. 


62  English  Leadership 

the  introduction  of  inquest.  For  the  selection  of 
juries  at  the  county  courts  prepared  opinion  and 
made  ready  the  procedure  for  political  elections, 
at  the  same  place,  to  represent  the  minor  land- 
owners in  the  great  council  which  became  the  Par- 
liament of  England.  ["A  bulwark^  of  individual 
liberty,  the  jury  also  holds  an  important  place  in 
the  establishment  of  representative  government, 
for  it  was  through  representative  juries  that  the 
voice  of  the  countryside  first  asserted  itself  in  the 
local  courts,  for  the  assessment  of  taxes  as  well 
as  for  the  decision  of  cases,  and  it  was  in  negotia- 
tions of  royal  officers  with  the  local  juries  that 
we  can  trace  the  beginnings  of  the  House  of 
Commons."]  Why  the  simple  institution  that 
withered  and  perished  on  one  side  of  the  Channel 
became  so  magnificently  fruitful  on  the  other  is 
easy  to  understand.  It  was  in  harmony  with  the 
popular  constitution  and  spirit  of  the  English  local 
courts;  it  fitted  naturally  into  the  ancient  English 
system,  reenforcing  it  and  being  reenforced,  while 
in  France  nothing  that  could  cooperate  with  it  had 
survived.     ["But  for  the  conquest-  of  England,  it 

*Cf.  Haskins,  "The  Normans  in  European  History,"  p.  113. 
—Ed. 

*Cf.  Pollock  and  Maitland,  History  of  English  Laiv,  Vol.  I, 
p.   141. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  63 

would  have  perished  and  long  ago  have  become 
a  matter  for  the  antiquary."] 

What  England  owed  to  the  Conqueror's  emas- 
culation of  her  feudal  system  became  apparent 
when  Henry  I  died.  The  accession  then  of  a  weak 
king,  whose  right  was  disputed  by  a  woman  and 
a  child,  let  loose  the  inhering  anarchy  of  the 
system.  This  anarchy  ran  riot  for  nineteen  years, 
a  period  during  which  the  system  was  given  op- 
portunity to  exhibit  the  rapid  spending  of  its  mis- 
chievous power.  For  a  little  time  it  afflicted  the 
country  with  deplorable  ruin  and  suffering;  but  in 
the  end  it  had  numbered  its  own  days.  Its  strength 
and  spirit  were  broken  by  the  strong  master, 
Henry  II,  who  came  next  to  the  crown,  and  the 
aristocracy  of  England  was  never  again  really 
feudalistic  in  constitution  or  in  disposition.  It 
never  swaggered  in  the  kingdom;  never  bullied 
crown  and  commons  with  equal  insolence,  as  the 
feudal  nobility  of  the  Continent  was  to  do  for 
several  centuries  to  come.  On  the  contrary,  the 
English  system,  in  order  to  secure  joint  action  in 
withstanding  the  aggressive  growth  of  royal 
power,  was  constrained  to  seek  respectful  alliance 
with  the  plain  people;  and  that  is  one  of  the  great- 
est of  the  saving  events  in  the  English  evolution 
of  government  by  the  governed.     The  political 


64  English  Leadership 

union  of  lords  and  commons,  in  movements  to 
maintain  the  rights  of  each  and  both,  and  to  define 
the  sovereignty  of  the  crown,  could  have  hap- 
pened nowhere  else  in  the  world,  either  then,  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  or  at  any  later  period  with- 
in the  mediaeval  range  of  time.  For  no  other 
monarchy  in  western  Europe  had  overawed  its 
nobility,  and  no  monarchy  in  the  east  was  less  than 
absolute  and  despotic  already;  furthermore,  no 
country  but  England  had  yet,  or  would  have  for 
ages,  a  rising  commonalty  of  third  estate,  acquir- 
ing any  measure  of  political  ability  or  weight, 
outside  of  its  thriving  commercial  and  industrial 
towns.  The  municipal  liberations  which  began  so 
early  in  the  city-republics  of  northern  Italy  and 
the  chartered  towns  of  Spain,  France,  Germany 
and  the  Netherlands,  were  not  accompanied  by  any 
coherent  development  of  a  rural  third  estate,  like 
that  diffused  through  the  counties  of  England, 
where  it  embodied  far  more  of  the  forces  that  were 
worlcing  for  a  fully  representative  and  constitu- 
tional government  than  ever  came  into  action  from 
the  towns. 

It  was  there,  in  the  population  of  the  broad 
agricultural  country,  outside  of  city  walls  and  apart 
from  merchant  or  trade-gilds,  that  a  body  of  minor 
landowners  had  grown  up,  near  enough  in  social 


English  Leadings  65 

status  to  the  nobility,  important  enough  in  weight 
of  property,  considerable  enough  in  numbers,  and 
trained  to  enough  activity  in  local  politics,  to  com- 
mand some  respect  from  the  baronial  order  and 
to  have  a  recognizable  footing  in  the  body  politic 
of  the  kingdom.  In  these  minor  landowners  lay  the 
substantial  and  efficient  political  strength  of  the 
English  commonalty,  from  the  beginning  of  its 
acquisition  of  influence  in  national  affairs,  con- 
tinuously down  to  times  that  are  within  the  mem- 
ory of  living  men.  They  who  came  to  be  the 
gentry  and  yeomanry  of  the  counties  were  the  first 
to  win  representation  in  the  national  council;  were 
always  in  the  lead  of  the  burgesses  of  the  towns; 
were  always  foremost  in  those  popular  movements 
that  won  success ;  were  always  the  unifying  element 
that  gave  solidarity,  weight  and  strength  to  the 
general  mass;  and  this  unifying  element  had  exist- 
ence nowhere  else. 

Without  doubt  this  peculiar  and  most  important 
feature  of  English  mediaeval  society  had  Its  begin- 
nings in  Anglo-Saxon  times;  but  it  owed  the  vigor 
of  its  development  in  part  to  the  Norman  Con- 
queror's skillful  hedging  of  feudalism  and  still 
more  to  the  casual  and  probably  unforeseen  effects 
of  the  change  he  made  in  the  constitution  of  the 
great  national  council  or  court.     That  which  had 


66  English  Leadership 

been  a  witenagemot, — the  king's  selection  of  politi- 
cally wise  men  as  found  in  the  higher  offices  of  state 
and  church, — became,  after  the  Conquest,  an  as- 
sembly of  the  tenants-in-chief  of  the  crown,  rough- 
ly representative  of  the  nation  through  its  most 
representative  class.  ^  By  the  time  of  Henry  II, 
if  not  before,  it  had  come  to  be  the  recognized 
right  of  every  tenant-in-chief  to  attend  the  meet- 
ings of  the  national  council.  The  political  status 
thus  given  must  have  gone  to  many  landowners 
of  comparatively  small  estate,  thereby  broadening 
immensely  the  social  basis  of  that  accretion  of 
popular  influence  in  public  affairs  which  began  in 
these  times. 

And  this  was  only  half  of  the  result  that  fol- 
lowed the  Conqueror's  reconstitution  of  the  great 
council  of  the  realm.  Both  lords  and  commons 
were  touched  in  another  way,  with  extraordinary 
effect.  Though  every  tenant-in-chief  had  the  right 
to  attend  the  meetings  of  the  national  council,  the 
greater  barons,  nevertheless,  were  honored  in  the 
royal  summons  to  such  meetings  by  a  distinguish- 
ing form.  The  summons  went  to  each  of  that  rank 
in  personal  letters  from  the  king;  whereas  the 
remaining  body  of  tenants-in-chief  received  it  as 
a   general    proclamation,    delivered    through   the 

'Cf.  Ogg,  Governments  of  Europe,  p.  7,  for  another  view. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  67 

sheriff  in  each  county  or  shire.  It  is  not  conceiv- 
able that  this  courteous  distinction  was  made  at 
the  beginning  with  any  political  intent;  but  the 
consequences  were  great  and  strange.  Those  who 
received  the  personal  summons  came  thereby  to 
be  marked  off  by  a  very  distinct  line  from  those 
who  did  not.  They  were  marked,  in  the  course 
of  time,  as  forming  what  we  may  call  an  official 
order  of  nobles, — a  body  of  "hereditary  counsel- 
ors of  the  Crown";  who  acquired  no  nobility  of 
blood,  and  whose  descendants  did  not  form  a  noble 
caste.  ^  This  nobility  of  a  parliamentary  office, 
the  peculiar  nobility  of  the  English  "peerage," 
descended  consequently  to  one  inheritor  of  each 
generation  in  one  main  line  of  each  baronial  fam- 
ily, and  the  branching  families  of  younger  sons 
were  thrown  off  from  the  stem  of  peerage-nobility, 
to  become  mixed  with  the  lesser  landlord  class, — 
with  the  knights  and  gentlemen  of  English  society, 
— and  to  be  reckoned  with  them  as  part  of  the 
commons  or  third  estate.  This  rescue  of  England 
from  the  growth  of  a  mean  and  mischievous 
swarm  of  petty  nobles,  by  the  political  merging  of 
its  minor  aristocracy  in  the  mass  of  the  commons, 

^  Cf.  Freeman,  The  House  of  Lords  and  Other  Upper  Houses, 
pp.  I,  7,  13.  Stubbs,  Constitutional  History  of  England,  Chap. 
13,   Sec.    159. — Author. 


68  English  Leadership 

resulting  as  it  did  from  a  mere  procedure  of  court 
etiquette  which  had  no  such  intent,  is  one  of  the 
many  singular  favors  of  circumstance  with  which 
the  political  history  of  the  English  people  is  filled. 

In  the  third  estate  of  Continental  countries 
there  was  nothing,  which  related  and  tied  them  to 
the  aristocracy,  unifying  all  that  could  act  from 
the  people  at  large  with  political  weight  and  force. 
The  localized,  bourgeois  third  estate  of  the  French 
towns  or  commons,  for  example,  acted  on  by  no 
mediating  social  influence,  could  not  be  organized 
into  a  national  oneness  of  interest  and  action,  as 
the  English  commons  were.  So  long  as  the  French 
monarchy  was  weak  and  the  feudal  aristocracy 
strong,  the  communes  were  natural  partisans  of 
the  crown,  and  gave  it  such  help  as  they  could  in 
the  long  struggle  which  made  royalty  supreme. 
Ultimately  they  were  placed  at  the  mercy  of  the 
triumphant  kings,  and  lords  and  people  sank  to- 
gether at  the  royal  feet.  Thus  circumstances  in 
France  forced  the  commons  to  an  alliance  which 
brought  despotism  upon  them,  just  as  plainly  as 
other  circumstances  in  England  led  the  commons 
to  an  alliance  which  had  among  its  results  a  future 
of  political  freedom. 

By  favor  of  circumstances,  then,  lords  and  com- 
mons  in   England   were   brought  to   an   effective 


English  Leadings  69 

union  for  checking  the  growth  of  royal  power,  and 
by  continued  favor  of  circumstances  their  union 
in  that  effort  was  crowned  with  success.  No 
other  European  monarch  of  his  day  held  the  power 
which  Henry  II  gathered  into  his  hands.  While 
sovereign  of  England,  more  substantially  than  any 
king  before  him,  he  was  the  feudal  lord,  likewise, 
of  half  of  France.  As  the  King  of  England,  Duke 
of  Normandy,  Duke  of  Aquitaine,  Count  of  Anjou, 
Count  of  Maine,  Count  of  Poitou  and  Count  of 
Touraine,  with  claims  to  the  lordship  of  Brittany 
and  Toulouse,  he  rivaled  in  rank  and  prestige,  and 
even  exceeded  in  actual  power,  the  emperor  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  Naturally  his  eminence  as 
a  Continental  prince  contributed  to  the  support  of 
his  authority  in  England;  but  he  happened  to  be 
one  of  the  few  monarchs  who  magnify  the  powers 
of  their  regal  office  by  the  strength  in  themselves. 
Its  domination  in  his  hands  was  for  good;  he  used 
it,  as  has  already  been  said,  to  establish  order  and 
peace  through  the  benignant  operation  of  justice. 
But  there  was  danger  in  the  dominance  he  had 
given  the  crown.  Had  his  sons,  who  succeeded 
him,  been  as  able  as  they  were  willing  to  be  despots, 
the  ensuing  combination  of  classes  in  the  nation, 
to  limit  and  define  the  royal  power,  might  have 
had  less  success.      But   Richard   Coeur  de   Lion 


70  English  Leadership 

was  too  hot-headed,  and  John  too  mean  to  be  for- 
midable in  the  encounter  with  a  well-developed 
will.  Richard,  an  absentee  king  during  all  but 
seven  months  of  the  ten  years  of  his  reign,  atten- 
tive to  nothing  in  England  but  the  extortion  of 
money  for  his  crusading  adventures  and  his  wars 
in  France,  prepared  a  feeling  in  the  kingdom  that 
was  easily  worked  into  revolt  by  the  baseness  and 
malignity  of  John.  "Our  evil  king  came  at  the 
moment  when  an  evil  king  was  needed,"  says 
Freeman;  and  that  is  a  simple  statement  of  fact. 
Coming  when  he  did.  King  John  is  to  be  counted 
among  the  most  notable  of  the  many  gifts  of  good 
fortune  to  the  English  people.  Everything  In  his 
character  and  every  circumstance  of  his  reign, — 
his  forfeiture  and  final  loss  of  Normandy,  Anjou, 
Maine  and  Touraine,  [Brittany,  Poitou  and  other 
minor  provinces],  the  suspicion  of  his  murder  of 
Prince  Arthur,  his  quarrel  with  the  Church,  the 
defeat  of  his  Continental  allies  at  Bouvines,  his 
many  notorious  cruelties  and  crimes, — all  com- 
bined to  unite  his  subjects  against  him  and  to  strip 
him  of  the  power  to  resist  their  demands.  To 
these  demands,  voiced  by  a  united  people,  the 
King  was  forced  to  accede  at  Runnymede  on  June 
15,  1215;  the  Great  Charter  signed  on  that  mem- 
orable day  is  a  document  which  underlies  in  its 


English  Leadings  71 

principles  and  in  its  influence  all  that  has  been 
most  successful  from  that  day  to  this  in  the  en- 
franchisement of  the  peoples  of  the  world.  ["The 
Great  Charter  is  the  first  great  public  act  of  the 
nation,  after  it  has  realized  its  own  identity.*  .  .  . 
The  whole  of  the  constitutional  history  of  Eng- 
land is  little  more  than  a  commentary  on  Magna 
Carta."  "Although  it  is  not  the  foundation  of 
English  liberty,  it  is  the  first,  the  clearest,  the 
most  united,  and  historically  the  most  important 
of  all  the  great  enunciations  of  it."  ^] 

That  the  English  won  the  Great  Charter  when 
they  did, — due  largely  though  it  was  to  a  chain 
of  circumstances  singularly  favoring, — entitles 
them  to  distinction  as  world-leaders  in  political 
development;  that  they  preserved  it  as  they  did 
is  their  yet  stronger  claim  to  the  grateful  admira- 
tion of  the  world.  [In  this  connection  it  is  inter- 
esting to  note  the  words  of  President  Wilson 
spoken  at  Mount  Vernon  on  July  4,  191 8:  "From 
this  green  hillside  ^  we  also  ought  to  be  able  to 
see  with  comprehending  eyes  the  world  that  lies 
around  us  and  conceive  anew  the  purpose  that 
must  set  men  free.     It  is  significant — significant 

*Cf.   Stubbs,   Constitutional  History  of  England,  Chap.  XII, 
sec.  155. — ^Ed. 

*Cf.  Stubbs,  The  Early  Plantagenets,  p.  158.— Ed. 
'Quoted  from  the  Neio  York  Times  of  July  5,  1918.— Ed. 


72  English  Leadership 

of  their  own  character  and  purpose  and  of  the  in- 
fluence they  were  setting  afoot — that  Washing- 
ton and  his  associates,  like  the  barons  at  Runny- 
mede,  spoke  and  acted,  not  for  a  single  people 
only,  but  for  all  mankind."]  Throughout  the  next 
two  centuries  they  were  seldom  neglectful  of  any 
opportunity  to  secure  confirmation  of  the  Charter 
from  successive  kings,  from  many  of  them  repeat- 
edly, by  attaching  that  condition  to  their  fiscal 
grants;  thus  before  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages 
it  stood  confirmed  no  less  than  thirty-eight  times.  * 
Political  principles  evolved  in  England  during  this 
period  were  the  outcome  of  a  constitutional  free- 
dom and  a  sense  of  popular  right  far  in  advance 
of  any  national  attainment  in  other  parts  of  the 
world.  On  the  Continent,  two-thirds  of  a  cen- 
tury later  than  Magna  Carta,  the  cities  of  Ara- 
gon,  already  represented  in  the  Cortes  of  that 
small  kingdom,  obtained  their  "Great  Privilege," 
which  went  even  beyond  Magna  Carta  in  its  af- 
firmation of  popular  rights;  but  there  was  no 
broadly  nationalized,  land-owning  third  estate  to 
support  the  burghers  of  the  free  towns;  and  this 
exposed  them  in  the  end  to  an  easy  suppression 

'This  statement  of  Mr.  Larned's  is  evidently  based  upon 
Gneist,  "History  of  the  English  Constitution,"  Vol.  I,  p.  311. 
—Ed. 


English  Leadings  73 

of  their  political  rights.     Italy  had  produced  its 
city-republics,  where  premature  and  untrained  de- 
mocracy ran  to  factions  which  were  already  breed- 
ing the  despots  of  the  following  age.     The  free 
German   cities   were    rising   to    an    independence 
which  helped  to  keep  up  the  feudal  repression  of 
nationality,  and  added  still  more  to  the  political 
confusions  of  Europe  by  concentrating  on  mere 
objects  of  trade  a  powerful  civic  spirit  and  a  rare 
organizing  capacity  which  in  English  towns  had 
been  directed  toward  national  unity.     The  com- 
munes of  France  were  struggling  with  their  seig- 
niorial neighbors  and  lending  a  hand  to  the  up- 
building of  a  monarchy  whose  absolutism  would 
ultimately  crush  them.     The  industrial  towns  of 
Flanders  were  being  intoxicated  with  riches,  mak- 
ing much  display  of  a  turbulent  free  spirit,  but 
planting  nothing  that  would  ripen  fruits  of  free- 
dom in  time  to  come.     Alone,  of  all  peoples,  the 
English   had    attained   a    degree   of   social   unity 
without  which  no  lasting  political  progress  was 
ever  possible,  and  were  enabled  thereby  to  estab- 
lish the  government  of  their  nation  on  a  constitu- 
tional basis,   substantially  fixed   and   importantly 
defined. 

Magna  Carta  was  not  a  political  constitution 
according  to  the  conception  of  the  present  day; 


74  English  Leadership 

nor  was  It  a  grant  of  liberties  from  king  to  sub- 
jects. The  texture  of  it  came,  with  little  color- 
ing, from  the  polity  of  the  Old-English,  pre-Nor- 
man  time,  for,  while  professedly  and  substantially 
it  was  a  confirmation  of  the  charter  of  Henry  I, 
that  in  turn  had  been  a  confirmation  and  reenact- 
ment  of  the  laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor.  In 
Henry's  charter  there  was  only  the  voice  of  a 
king  who  made  promises  to  his  subjects.  In 
Magna  Carta,  on  the  contrary,  there  was  the  stern 
voice  of  a  nation  exacting  the  fulfillment  of  those 
promises  from  all  its  kings.  This  is  the  distinc- 
tion which  has  made  Magna  Carta  fundamental 
in  the  history  of  constitutional  government. 

Although  not  in  its  terms  a  political  constitu- 
tion, the  Great  Charter  did,  nevertheless,  in  its 
effects,  alter  the  nature  of  the  national  council. 
In  providing  for  the  summoning  of  "archbishops, 
bishops,  earls,  and  greater  barons,"  and  of  "all 
tenants  in  capite,"  to  meetings  of  the  "Common 
Council  of  the  Nation,"  it  declares  that  "the  con- 
sent of  those  present  on  the  appointed  day  shall 
bind  those  who,  though  summoned,  shall  not  have 
attended."  This  principle  led  inevitably  to  the 
choosing  of  deputies  for  a  representative  attend- 
ance by  those  who  stayed  at  home;  and  it  would 
hardly  be  practicable  to  confine   such   an  act  of 


English  Leadings  75 

election  to  the  king's  tenants-in-chief.  For,  as 
Freeman  says,  "There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
king's  tenants-in-chief  were  a  much  larger  body, 
and  took  in  men  of  much  smaller  estates,  than 
we  might  at  first  sight  be  inclined  to  think;  still 
they  did  not  take  in  the  whole  body  of  freemen, 
not  even  the  whole  body  of  men  holding  land  by 
free  tenure.  But,  as  soon  as  the  election  of  defi- 
nite representatives  was  fully  established,  since 
those  representatives  could  be  chosen  nowhere 
but  in  the  ancient  county  court,  every  freeholder, 
at  least,  if  not  every  freeman,  won  back  his 
right."  ' 

To  maintain  the  Great  Charter  of  the  English 
people,  until  time  should  give  it  the  force  of  es- 
tablished law,  required  as  much  unity  and  energy 
of  public  spirit  as  had  gone  to  the  winning  of  it, 
— required,  in  its  turn,  favoring  circumstances 
quite  as  much  as  before.  Again  a  source  of  such 
serviceableness  to  the  upbuilding  of  constitutional 
government  was  found  in  the  character  of  John's 
successor,  Henry  III,  whose  folly  and  personal 
weakness  made  it  possible  to  strip  from  him  even 
the  unquestioned  prerogatives  of  the  crown  he 
wore.    There  were,  however,  thirty  years  of  sorry 

'Quoted    from    Freeman,   History    of   the   Norman    Conquest, 
Vol.   V,   p.  4/7--Ed. 


76  English  Leadership 

submlssiveness  in  the  nation  to  plunder  and  mis- 
government  at  the  hands  of  a  swarm  of  foreign 
favorites  of  the  king,  while  a  powerful  papal 
court  was  permitted  to  practice  such  extortions 
as  the  kingdom  had  never  experienced  before. 
Suffering  under  these  intolerable  conditions,  the 
nation  waited  only  for  a  fit  leader  to  organize  its 
discontent.  The  man  who  proved  equal  to  the 
needs  of  the  time  was  Simon  de  Montfort,  a  noble 
of  French  birth,  but  with  English  blood  in  his 
veins,  and  thoroughly  in  sympathy  with  the  na- 
tional feeling  against  king  and  court.  On  his  pro- 
posal the  national  council, — beginning  now  to  be 
called  a  "parliament," — summoned  by  the  extrav- 
agant king  in  1258  to  vote  supplies,  proceeded  in- 
stead boldly  to  take  from  the  king's  control  many 
functions  of  executive  government.  The  first  re- 
sult was  an  organization  of  baronial  power  fully 
as  dangerous  as  royal  absolutism;  but  Earl  Simon, 
nobly  faithful  to  the  popular  polity  of  his  adopted 
country,  took  the  lead  in  resistance  to  the  feudal 
uprising  which  resulted. 

After  Montfort's  victory  at  Lewes  which  made 
him,  for  a  time,  master  of  the  situation,  his  clear 
comprehension  of  the  logical  drift  of  political 
conditions  in  England  became  evident.  When  he 
dictated  the  call  of  a  parliament  to  deal  with  the 


English  Leadings  77 

new  state  of  affairs,  he  caused  writs  to  be  sent 
out  which  required  the  election  of  four  representa- 
tive knights  from  each  shire.  When  that  parHa- 
ment  had  subjected  the  king  to  control  by  a  coun- 
cil in  which  Earl  Simon  was  chief,  he  caused  an- 
other to  be  assembled  in  the  following  year 
(1265)  by  a  summons  which  brought  two  repre- 
sentatives from  each  city  and  borough,  as  well  as 
two  from  each  shire.  Thus  was  established  by  a 
great  earl  a  signal  precedent  for  the  representa- 
tion of  the  English  commons,  first  on  the  side  of 
the  land-owning  gentry  of  the  counties,  and  then 
on  the  side  of  the  burghers  of  the  towns.  It  was 
a  precedent  too  vital  to  be  set  aside  by  Mont- 
fort's  overthrow  and  death  the  following  sum- 
mer; but  for  the  next  thirty  years  the  adhesion 
to  it  was  capricious  and  imperfect.  Then  came, 
in  1295,  the  fixing  of  an  accepted  pattern  for  the 
future,  by  the  seating  of  two  representatives  from 
each  borough  and  each  shire,  in  what  is  known  as 
the  "Model  Parliament"  of  Edward  I.  The 
agency  of  that  great  king  in  establishing  a  con- 
stitutional and  representative  government  for 
England  was  completed  two  years  later,  when  he 
reissued  the  Great  Charter,  restoring  the  original 
provision  forbidding  taxation  without  parlia- 
mentary consent,  which  Henry  III,  in  his  shifty 


78  English  Leadership 

confirmation  of  it,  had  been  allowed  to  omit. 
Thenceforward,  this  law  of  taxation,  the  potent 
safeguard  of  liberty  and  popular  rights,  might 
often  be  violated,  but  it  stood  indisputable  as  a 
fundamental  law  of  the  land. 

[Edward  I  holds  a  very  prominent  place  in  the 
growth  of  English  constitutional  government,  not 
only  as  a  great  constitutional  reformer,  but  also 
as  a  great  legislator,  for  his  reign  was  distin- 
guished by  a  series  of  laws  which  stand  in  the 
forefront  of  English  statutes.  "Edward's  task  ^ 
was  to  resume  what  Henry  had  begun;  to  preserve 
what  was  best,  and  adapt  it  to  new  conditions; 
to  accept  at  the  same  time  the  most  beneficial 
and  necessary  of  the  reforms  which  had  been 
forced  on  the  Crown;  and  to  fuse  the  old  and  the 
new  into  the  structure  of  the  Constitution.  Al- 
though he  adapted  and  supplemented  rather  than 
originated,  he  completed  the  ground  plan  of  the 
English  government  as  it  exists  to-day.  Those 
who  came  after  had  only  to  complete  the  edifice 
on  the  foundations  which  he  had  reared.  .  .  . 
Through  the  efforts  of  Edward  the  common  man 
was  placed  more  securely  than  ever  before  under 
the  law  of  the  land  as  against  the   feudal  lord. 

'  Cf.  A.  L.  Cross,  History  of  England  and  Greater  Britain, 
pp.  167-8, — Ed, 


English  Leadings  79 

By  the  close  of  his  reign  the  three  common  law 
courts,  the  King's  Bench,  the  Common  Pleas,  and 
the  Exchequer,  had  taken  shape  each  with  its  dis- 
tinct records,  and  they  continued  practically  un- 
changed till  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
.  .  .  All  this  and  more  was  brought  about  largely 
by  a  series  of  laws  or  statutes  so  comprehensive 
and  so  superior  in  numbers  and  importance  that 
the  reign  of  Edward  can  almost  be  said  to  mark 
the  beginning  of  English  legislation."]  Thus  Eng- 
land, at  the  close  of  the  thirteenth  century,  had 
become  a  fully  organized  constitutional  monarchy, 
with  a  powerful  section  of  its  common  people, — 
an  independent  upper-middle  class, — represented, 
with  nobles  and  clergy,  in  a  national  legislature, 
— a  legislature  which  held  recognized  authority 
to  control,  by  just  constraints  of  law,  not  only  the 
actions  of  their  sovereign  but  even  the  filling  of 
his  purse. 

The  nearest  approach  elsewhere  to  this  politi- 
cal advancement  of  the  people  was  in  the  transient 
and  uncertain  representation  of  towns  in  the 
Cortes  of  Castile  and  Aragon.  A  few  years  later, 
France  made  her  first  experiment  in  the  consulta- 
tion of  deputies  from  the  people  by  their  king, 
v/hich  might  have  led  on  to  the  evolution  of  a 
representative  legislature,  if  France  had  been  less 


8o  English  Leadership 

feudalized;  but  no  such  results  could  be  hoped 
for.  It  was  tried  in  1302,  when  Philip  IV,  quar- 
reling with  the  Pope  and  trying  to  tax  the  clergy, 
summoned  deputies  from  the  towns  to  meet  with 
the  barons  and  prelates,  in  the  hope  that  he  might 
thus  secure  the  aid  of  the  third  estate.  A  second 
meeting  of  the  three  estates  was  called  in  13 14, 
and  a  third  forty-one  years  later,  in  1355.  From 
that  time  until  1614  occasional  assemblies  of  what 
came  to  be  known  as  the  States-General  ^  were 
convened,  to  meet  exigencies  that  arose,  but  never 
with  any  regularity  or  on  any  acknowledged  prin- 
ciple that  could  establish  the  constitutional  exist- 
ence of  the  assembly  as  the  law-making  body  of 
the  government.  After  1614  the  States-General 
was  suppressed  for  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
years;  it  reappeared  only  to  inaugurate  the  great 
Revolution,  in  1789.  [The  failure  of  the  third  es- 
tate to  secure  permanent  right  of  representation 
is  perhaps  explained,  in  large  measure,  by  the 
great  extent  of  France  and  the  consequent  widely 

*In  France,  during  and  after  the  13th  century,  the  name 
parliament  was  applied,  not  to  royal  councils  or  legislative 
assemblies,  but  to  certain  great  judicial  bodies,  in  different 
parts  of  the  kingdom,  twelve  in  all,  of  which  the  Parlement 
of  Paris  was  the  superintending  head.  The  king  required 
royal  ordinances  to  be  registered  by  the  Parlement  of  Paris, 
which  sometimes  remonstrated  against  them,  and  sometimes 
refused   registration,  but  rarely  with  success. — Author. 


English  Leadings  8l 

differing  local  interests;  these  encouraged  section- 
alism rather  than  unity,  and  thus  enabled  the 
crown  to  play  off  one  faction  against  another, — 
a  game  which  resulted  in  the  ultimate  subjection 
of  all  classes  to  an  overwhelming  absolutism.] 

Meanwhile,  events  in  the  fourteenth  century 
were  productive  both  in  England  and  on  the  Con- 
tinent of  an  uncommon  medley  of  social  and  po- 
litical influences,  more  or  less  discordant,  but  tend- 
ing on  the  whole  toward  the  strengthening  of 
forces  on  the  side  of  the  common  people.  Under 
them  all  ran  the  effects  of  the  atrocious  Hundred 
Years'  War  opened  by  the  claims  of  Edward  III 
to  the  crown  of  France. 

The  English  successes  in  the  early  campaigns 
of  the  war  were  intoxicating  to  national  vain- 
glory, making  parliament  deferential  to  royal 
wishes  and  demands,  and  careless  in  the  guarding 
of  popular  rights.  To  the  lords  the  war  was 
profitable,  in  enormous  plunder,  in  personal  dis- 
tinctions and  honors,  and  In  gains  of  importance 
to  their  order.  Relatively  the  commons  were 
losers,  for  a  time,  from  these  effects.  But  geo- 
graphic advantages,  historic  accident  and  time 
were  working  In  their  favor;  for,  during  this  war, 
a  great  Increase  in  Industrial  and  commercial  pros- 
perity was  brought  to  many  English  towns  through 


82  English  Leadership 

Edward's  alliance  with  the  Flemings  and  the  con- 
sequent general  stimulation  of  seafaring  enter- 
prise; Flemish  weavers  and  dyers  came  to  Eng- 
land, introducing  improvements  of  process  and 
skill  which  enabled  the  English  very  soon  to  man- 
ufacture cloth  for  themselves  from  their  large 
production  of  wool,  hitherto  exported  in  the  fleece 
and  imported  as  cloth.  Out  of  these  conditions 
there  grew  up  an  organization  of  English  mer- 
chants, under  the  name  of  Merchant  Adventurers, 
which,  entering  into  competition  with  the  Han- 
seatic  and  other  trade  leagues  of  the  Continent, 
soon  outstripped  all  its  rivals,  and  laid  the  founda- 
tion for  that  extraordinary  commercial  career 
upon  which  England  now  entered.  [Thus  the 
Hundred  Years'  War  bore  fruits  for  all  time  in 
the  impetus  it  gave  to  English  commercial  su- 
premacy. But  this  is  not  its  ultimate  significance; 
for  the  local  rights  granted  by  Edward  III  to  the 
rapidly  growing  towns,  in  return  for  their  finan- 
cial support,  enabled  them  to  become  independent 
of  feudal  control,  and  so  laid  the  foundation  for 
that  final  overthrow  of  the  feudal  aristocracy 
which  was  to  come  a  century  later  in  the  Wars  of 
the  Roses;  this  overthrow  in  turn  was  absolutely 
necessary  before  there  could  be  brought  about  a 
permanent  establishment  of  that  popular  constitu- 


English  Leadings  83 

tlonal  government,  in  whose  development  the 
English  have  been  so  continuously  leaders,] 

The  Hundred  Years'  War  was  a  strong  im- 
petus toward  the  establishment  of  constitutional 
government  not  only  through  the  increased  free- 
dom which  it  brought  to  the  great  middle  class 
of  the  English  towns,  but  also  through  the  quick- 
ening which  it  undoubtedly  gave  to  a  remarkable 
movement  among  the  great  mute  lower  classes 
which  formed  the  understratum  of  English  so- 
ciety,— a  movement  which  brought  about  nothing 
less  than  a  social  revolution.  The  political  van- 
tage ground  which  the  English  people  were  to 
gain  before  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century 
would  not,  within  the  next  three  hundred  years,  be 
reached  by  any  other  people  in  the  world. 
Throughout  this  period  their  hold  upon  that 
ground  would  not  be  sure  or  unbroken,  but  they 
would  succeed  in  keeping  so  strong  a  semblance 
of  possession  that  their  rights  would  never  be 
lost. 

Till  near  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
mass  of  the  agricultural  laborers  of  England,  as 
of  other  countries,  had  been  held  in  various  forms 
of  bondage  to  the  owners  of  the  soil.  Their  loss 
of  freedom  ranged  from  that  of  a  few  actual 
slaves,   who   disappeared   early,   to   that   of   the 


84  English  Leadership 

villeins,  who,  in  one  view,  were  tenants  of  the 
lord  they  served,  since  they  occupied  and  culti- 
vated allotments  of  ground  for  their  own  benefit, 
and  their  labor  was  divided  between  these  and 
the  requirements  of  their  manorial  lord,  but  who, 
in  another  view,  were  serfs,  since  the  terms  of 
tenancy  were  not  a  matter  of  free  arrangement 
and  could  not  be  changed  without  the  lord's  con- 
sent. Now,  however,  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  the  decay  of  feudal  conditions  began  to 
relax  the  rigors  of  villeinage,  which  in  turn  was 
giving  way  to  systems  of  hire  for  labor  and  of 
money-rental  for  land.  This  great  social  revolu- 
tion, far  earlier  in  England  than  elsewhere,  was 
hastened,  at  about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  by  the  effects  of  a  frightful  pestilence 
called  the  "Black  Death."  From  one-third  to 
one-half  the  population  of  the  kingdom  is  believed 
to  have  been  swept  away,  producing  a  scarcity  of 
labor  which  forced  landowners  to  let  their  lands 
to  tenant-farmers,  thus  strengthening  the  middle 
class,  and  preparing  the  way  for  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  lower  classes. 

Out  of  these  social  changes,  helped,  no  doubt, 
by  other  influences,  came  an  extraordinary  propa- 
gation of  the  extreme  socialistic  and  democratic 
ideas  of  John  Ball  and  other  priests.    Along  with 


English  Leadings  85 

Wycliffe's  religious  wakening  of  the  age,  it  first 
grew  into  the  Lollard  movement,  which  ran  its 
course  in  the  later  years  of  the  fourteenth  century 
and  after.  The  underclasses  in  England  were 
never  again  stirred  to  so  open  and  aggressive  an 
assertion  of  equality  among  men,  till  the  French 
Revolution  drew  some  faint  echoing  from  their 
ranks.  The  influences  which  contributed  to  this 
movement  in  the  popular  mind  arose  mainly, 
without  doubt,  from  various  causes  of  disturb- 
ance in  religious  belief.  Throughout  the  century 
the  Papacy,  in  the  English  mind,  was  sinking  low 
and  lower  in  authority  and  respect,  because  of 
the  national  antagonism  aroused  by  the  removal 
of  its  seat  from  Rome  to  Avignon,  followed  by  the 
election  of  a  series  of  popes  who  were  believed 
to  be  under  French  control,  and  then  by  the  forty 
years  of  "the  Great  Schism,"  during  which  a  suc- 
cession of  rival  popes,  or  popes  and  antipopes, 
thundered  anathemas  and  excommunications  at 
one  another  from  Avignon  and  Rome,  dividing 
the  whole  Christian  Church  into  hostile  camps. 
[English  antagonism  to  papal  authority  was  still 
further  increased  by  the  interference  of  the  popes 
in  English  ecclesiastical  appointments,  by  the  in- 
creasing wealth  of  the  higher  clergy,  and  by  the 
growing  idleness  and  decadence  of  the  monastic 


86  English  Leadership 

orders.]  Consequences  of  demoralization  in  the 
religious  orders,  among  the  secular  clergy,  and 
more  or  less  throughout  the  hierarchy  of  the 
Church,  were  very  grave. 

In  themselves  these  causes  of  disturbance  to 
the  religious  attitude  of  the  English  mind  might 
not,  directly,  touch  anything  in  close  relation  to 
social  or  political  ideas;  but  the  loosening  of  es- 
tablished habit  in  some  one  large  arena  of  thought 
and  feeling,  among  the  minds  that  are  acting  on 
each  other  in  an  intimate  mass,  is  quite  sure  to 
spread  to  other  habit-formations  in  the  same 
minds,  opening  new  views  on  other  sides  of  exist- 
ence,— giving  escape  to  other  ideas.  That  this 
had  now  happened  in  England  seems  plain.  Out 
of  the  new  stir  of  thought,  in  one  direction,  came 
the  wonderfully  advanced  doctrines  of  theological 
and  ecclesiastical  reform,  maintained  with  incred- 
ible boldness  by  Wycliffe,  between  1370  and  1382, 
and  made  known  to  the  common  people  by  the 
"poor  priests"  whom  that  great  precursor  of  the 
Protestant  Reformation  inspired  and  trained  for 
this  missionary  work;  in  the  other  direction  came 
the  socialistic  agitation  led  by  John  Ball,  with  its 
culmination  in  the  Wat  Tyler  insurrection  of 
138 1.  That  much  of  what  went  into  the  English 
Reformation  of  nearly  two  centuries  later  grew 


English  Leadings  87 

from  Wycllffe's  seed-planting, — in  his  translation 
of  the  Bible  and  in  his  arguments  against  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  the  worship  of 
saints,  the  use  of  images,  and  the  "Judaising"  of 
worship  by  splendors  of  accessory  and  elabora- 
tions of  ceremony, — may  be  surmised,  though  the 
growth  may  not  be  traced.  It  can  be  said  with 
safety,  however,  that  his  rightful  rank  among  the 
chiefs  who  give  glory  to  the  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish peoples  has  never  been  awarded  by  the  com- 
mon acclaim  it  should  have;  for  it  was  he  who 
first  attempted  to  give  to  the  mute  millions  of  the 
understratum  that  voice  which  was,  five  hundred 
years  later,  to  make  itself  heard  in  the  reforms 
of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Hitherto  in  this  rapid  survey  of  progress  in 
England  toward  a  constitutional  government  un- 
der representative  institutions,  we  have  been  trac- 
ing an  almost  unbroken  succession  of  events  and 
circumstances  strangely  helpful,  on  the  whole,  to 
such  progress,  sometimes  even  inviting  the  action 
which  secured  it.  We  have  come  now  to  a  period 
whose  most  important  event  had  the  primary  ef- 
fect of  confirming  to  Parliament  the  highest  pre- 
rogative it  could  yet  think  of  exercising.  When 
Richard  II  was  confronted  by  his  banished  cousin, 


88  English  Leadership 

Henry  of  Lancaster,  at  the  head  of  a  successful 
rebellion,  Parliament  assumed,  for  the  first  time, 
the  right  to  take  the  crown  from  a  living  sov- 
ereign and  place  it  on  another  head.  The  Eng- 
lish kingship  had  alv^^ays  been  theoretically  elect- 
ive with  the  choice  limited,  however,  to  members 
of  one  royal  house.  As  the  fact  is  expressed  by 
Taswell-Langmead,  "the  Norman  Conquest  in- 
troduced a  new  dynasty,  and  a  more  comprehen- 
sive idea  of  royalty  .  .  .  but  it  effected  no  legal 
change  in  the  nature  of  the  succession  to  the 
Crown.  Election  by  the  National  Assembly  was 
still  necessary  to  confer  an  inchoate  right  to  be- 
come King."  ^  The  Norman  Conqueror  recog- 
nized this,  and  obtained  the  election  in  due  form. 
His  successors  were  invested  with  the  regal  office 
by  the  same  formal  expression  of  a  national 
choice.  But  the  transferring  of  the  choice  from 
one  who  had  already  received  it  to  another,  who, 
although  not  in  the  most  direct  line  of  descent, 
was  nevertheless  deemed  more  worthy,  was  an 
assumption  by  Parliament  of  an  altogether  new 
prerogative,  involving  the  complete  custody  of  the 
crown.      [He    (Henry  of  Lancaster)    based  his 

*  Quoted  from  Taswell-Langmead,  English  Constitutional  His' 
tory,  p.  194. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  89 

claim  ^  on  two  grounds,  right  of  descent  from 
Henry  III,  and  right  of  conquest.  ...  In  any 
event,  Henry's  claim  of  descent  was  merely  a  pre- 
text. His  second  claim  was  the  decisive  one. 
Parliament  chose  him  because,  as  the  ablest  male 
of  the  royal  house,  he  had  overcome  a  king  who 
had  defied  the  laws  and  oppressed  the  subject. 
The  title  of  the  new  Lancastrian  house  was  then 
a  parliamentary  one.  In  the  end  it  had  to  give 
way  to  the  older  rival  line  which  it  had  sup- 
planted; but  its  accession  was  of  the  deepest  con- 
stitutional significance.  It  confirmed  a  precedent 
that  kings  could  be  deposed  for  misrule  and  es- 
tabhshed  a  new  one  that  Parliament  could  choose 
a  successor  not  necessarily  the  next  in  blood.  The 
fact  that,  as  elective  kings,  the  Lancastrians  made 
a  bargain  to  govern  in  accord  with  the  will  of 
Parliament  was  also  of  the  profoundest  impor- 
tance."] Thus  was  established  the  precedent  for 
what  may  be  described  as  a  recalled  and  trans- 
ferred election. 

The  effect  of  the  deposition  of  Richard  II  and 
the  election  of  Henry  IV  was  to  give  the  nation 
a  king  who  treated  its  representatives — his  elect- 
ors— with  extreme  respect,  and  the  power  of  the 

'Cf.  A.  L.  Cross,  History  of  England  and  Greater  Britain, 
pp.  240-246. — Ed. 


90  English  Leadership 

Commons  rose  high.  [The  powers  and  privileges 
of  parliament  ^  recognized  by  Henry  IV, — pow- 
ers and  privileges  so  momentous  in  the  develop- 
ment of  English  constitutional  government, — 
were  chiefly  these:  (i)  No  new  law  could  be 
passed  without  the  approval  of  parliament;  (2) 
Redress  of  grievances  must  precede  supply  of 
funds,  no  taxes  could  be  levied  or  collected  with- 
out the  consent  of  parliament,  and  these  taxes 
could  be  voted  only  on  the  last  day  of  the  session, 
after  the  petitions  of  the  people  had  been  granted; 
(3)  Parliament  maintained  its  right  to  cut  down 
the  king's  expenditures,  and  audit  his  accounts,  to 
dismiss  his  ministers  and  force  upon  him  its  ad- 
vice on  the  conduct  of  wars,  on  the  drawing  up 
of  treaties  and  on  all  other  important  measures 
of  government;  (4)  Members  were  free  from  ar- 
rest while  In  attendance  upon,  or  on  their  way 
to,  meetings,  and  were  granted  freedom  of  debate 
with  immunity  from  punishment  for  utterances 
made  in  the  meetings  of  the  parliament. 

Even  though  most  of  these  powers  and  privi- 
leges of  parliament  were  not  permanently  estab- 

*  Cf.  Adams  and  Stephens,  Select  Documents  of  English  Con- 
stitutional History,  nos.  103-115;  H.  D.  Traill,  Social  England, 
Vol.  II,  p.  279-282;  A.  L.  Cross,  History  of  England  and  Greater 
Britain,  pp.  246-247;  Maitland,  Constitutional  History  of  Eng- 
land, pp.   182-4. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  91 

lished  until  centuries  afterward,  some  of  them 
not  even  yet,  nevertheless,  the  fact  that  the  jus- 
tice of  these  claims  was  recognized  and  acknowl- 
edged by  the  sovereign,  and  their  value  appre- 
ciated by  the  representatives  of  the  people,  makes 
them  principles  of  fundamental  importance  in  the 
development  of  constitutional  government.  "Pre- 
maturely ^  Richard  had  challenged  the  rights  of 
the  nation,  and  the  victory  of  the  nation  was  pre- 
mature. The  royal  position  was  founded  on  as- 
sumptions that  had  not  even  prescription  in  their 
favor;  the  victory  of  the  house  of  Lancaster  was 
won  by  the  maintenance  of  rights  which  were 
claimed  rather  than  established.  The  growth  of 
the  commons,  and  of  the  parliament  itself  in  that 
constitution  of  which  the  commons  were  becoming 
the  strongest  part,  must  not  be  estimated  by  the 
rights  which  they  had  actually  secured,  but  by 
those  which  they  were  strong  enough  to  claim, 
and  wise  enough  to  appreciate.  If  the  course  of 
history  had  run  otherwise,  England  might  pos- 
sibly have  been  spared  three  centuries  of  political 
difficulties;  for  the  most  superficial  reading  of  his- 
tory is  sufficient  to  show  that  the  series  of  events 
which  form  the  crises  of  the  Great  Rebellion  and 
the  Revolution  might  link  themselves  on  to  the 

^Cf.  Stubbs,  Constitutional  History  of  England,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
652-653. — Ed. 


92  English  Leadership 

theory  of  Richard  II  as  readily  as  to  that  of 
James  I.  .  .  .  The  failure  of  the  house  of  Lan- 
caster, the  tyranny  of  the  house  of  York,  the 
statecraft  of  Henry  VII,  the  apparent  extinction 
of  the  constitution  under  the  dictatorship  of 
Henry  VIII,  the  political  resurrection  under 
Elizabeth,  were  all  needed  to  prepare  and  equip 
England  to  cope  successfully  with  the  principles 
of  Richard  II,  masked  under  legal,  religious,  phil- 
osophical embellishments  in  the  theory  of  the 
Stewarts."]  "Never  before  and  never  again  for 
more  than  two  hundred  years,"  says  Bishop 
Stubbs,  "were  the  Commons  as  strong  as  they 
were  under  Henry  IV."  The  resulting  good  will 
of  the  nation  at  large  upheld  him  on  the  throne 
against  repeated  conspiracies  and  rebellions.  His 
son,  Henry  V,  maintained  himself  in  equal  popu- 
larity by  renewing,  with  brilliant  temporary  suc- 
cess, the  Hundred  Years'  War  with  France.  Then 
came  the  lamentable  situation  produced  by  the 
succession  to  the  throne  of  a  child  who  had  no 
manhood  in  him  to  be  matured.  Struggles  for  the 
control  of  the  nominal  regality  which  attached  to 
the  name  and  person  of  Henry  VI  were  sure  to 
run,  as  they  did,  into  strife  for  the  possession  of 
the  crown  he  wore.  In  the  resulting  civil  wars, 
constitutional  government   went   early  to   wreck. 


English  Leadings  93 

— so  nearly  that  only  a  few  occasional  forms  of 
an  imitative  parliamentary  procedure  were  kept, 
in  evidence  of  suspended  popular  rights.  At  the 
end  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  nearly  all  of  the 
old  nobility  had  perished  in  battle  or  on  the  scaf- 
fold, or  had  gone  to  exile  or  suffered  impoverish- 
ment by  the  confiscation  of  estates.  New  families, 
of  less  prestige  and  influence,  and  less  capable  of 
putting  restraints  on  the  crown,  had  risen  to  the 
higher  ranks  and  supplied  the  peerage  of  the 
realm.  The  commons,  accustomed  to  act  under 
baronial  leadership,  were  unprepared  to  take  upon 
themselves  the  responsible  defense  of  public  in- 
terests and  rights. 

Thus  there  developed  conditions  which  opened 
the  way  to  an  arbitrary  kingship,  and  the  sov- 
ereigns of  the  Tudor  family  were  qualified  to 
make  the  most  of  them.  For  more  than  a  hun- 
dred years,  from  the  accession  of  Henry  VII  to 
the  death  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  the  monarchy  be- 
came, in  practice,  nearly  as  absolute  as  that  of 
France.  But  occasional  parliaments,  even  though 
pliant  to  the  royal  will,  kept  the  theory  of  con- 
stitutional government  in  force  and  the  essential 
spirit  of  a  free  people  alive,  even  through  the 
brutal  autocracy  of  Henry  VIII.  That  spirit  in 
the  nation,  product  of  long  culture  under  free  in- 


94  English  Leadership 

stitutions,  might  be  bullied  into  dumb  stupor  or 
infatuated  to  foolish  adoration,  but  it  never  lost 
its  potential  energy. 

["With  the  transition  ^  from  mediaeval  to  mod- 
ern history,  the  conditions  were  altered  in  Eng- 
land's favor.  The  geographical  expansion  of 
Europe  made  the  outposts  of  the  Old  World  the 
entrepots  for  the  New;  the  development  of  navi- 
gation and  sea-power  changed  the  ocean  from  the 
limit  into  the  link  of  empires;  and  the  growth  of 
industry  and  commerce  revolutionized  the  social 
and  financial  foundations  of  power.  National 
states  were  forming;  the  state  which  could  best 
adapt  itself  to  these  changed  and  changing  condi- 
tions would  out-distance  its  rivals;  and  its  capac- 
ity to  adapt  itself  to  them  would  largely  depend 
on  the  strength  and  flexibility  of  its  national  or- 
ganization. It  was  the  achievement  of  the  New 
Monarchy  [of  the  Tudois]  to  fashion  this  organ- 
ization, and  to  rescue  the  country  from  an  anarchy 
which  had  already  given  other  powers  the  start 
in  the  race  and  promised  little  success  for  Eng- 
land. 

"Henry  VII  had  to  begin  in  a  quiet,  unostenta- 
tious way  with  very  scanty  materials.  .   .   .   His 

*The  following  excerpts  are  taken  from  A.  F.  Pollard's  His- 
tory of  England,  pp.  88-1 1 6. — Ed, 


English  Leadings  95 

reign  is  dull,  because  he  gave  peace  and  prosperity 
at  home  without  fighting  a  battle  abroad.  His 
foreign  policy  was  dictated  by  insular  interests  re- 
gardless of  personal  glory;  and  the  security  of 
his  kingdom  and  the  trade  of  his  people  were  the 
aims  of  all  his  treaties  with  other  powers.  At 
home  he  carefully  depressed  the  over-mighty  sub- 
jects who  had  made  the  Wars  of  the  Roses;  he 
kept  down  their  number  with  such  success  that  he 
left  behind  him  only  one  English  duke  and  one 
English  marquis;  he  limited  their  retainers,  and 
restrained  by  means  of  the  Star  Chamber  their 
habits  of  maintaining  lawbreakers,  packing  juries, 
and  intimidating  judges.  By  a  careful  distribu- 
tion of  fines  and  benevolences  he  filled  his  ex- 
chequer without  taxing  the  mass  of  his  people; 
and  by  giving  office  to  ecclesiastics  and  men  of 
humble  origin  he  both  secured  cheaper  and  more 
efficient  administration,  and  established  a  check 
upon  feudal  influence.  ...  He  left  his  son, 
Henry  VIII,  a  stable  throne  and  a  united  king- 
dom. 

'The  first  half  of  Henry  VIII's  reign  left  little 
mark  on  English  history.  ...  In  1529  Henry 
began  the  process,  completed  in  the  acts  of  An- 
nates, Appeals,  and  Supremacy,  by  which  Eng- 
land severed  its  connexion  with  Rome,  and  the 


96  English  Leadership 

king  became  head  of  an  English  church.  It  is  ir- 
rational to  pretend  that  so  durable  an  achieve- 
ment was  due  to  so  transient  a  cause  as  Henry's 
passion  for  Anne  Boleyn  or  desire  for  a  son; 
vaster,  older,  and  more  deeply  seated  forces  were 
at  work.  In  one  sense  the  breach  was  simply  the 
ecclesiastical  consummation  of  the  forces  which 
had  long  been  making  for  national  independence, 
and  the  religious  complement  of  the  changes 
which  had  emancipated  the  English  state,  lan- 
guage, and  literature  from  foreign  control.  The 
Catholic  church  naturally  resisted  its  disintegra- 
tion, and  the  severance  was  effected  by  the  secular 
arms  of  parliament  and  the  crown.  The  national- 
ism of  the  English  church  was  the  result  rather 
than  the  cause  of  the  breach  with  Rome,  and  its 
national  characteristics  .  .  .  were  all  imposed  by 
parliament  after,  and  not  adopted  by  the  church 
before,  the  separation. 

"Catholicity  had  broken  down  in  the  state  with 
the  decline  of  the  empire,  and  was  fast  breaking 
down  in  the  church;  nationalism  had  triumphed 
in  the  state,  and  was  now  to  triumph  in  the  church. 
In  this  respect  the  Reformation  was  the  greatest 
achievement  of  the  national  state,  which  emerged 
from  the  struggle  with  no  rival  for  its  omnicom- 
petent authority.     Its  despotism  was  the  predomi- 


English  Leadings  97 

nant  characteristic  of  the  century,  for  the  national 
state  successfully  rid  itself  of  the  checks  imposed, 
on  the  one  hand  by  the  Catholic  church,  and  on 
the  other  by  the  feudal  franchises.  But  the  su- 
premacy was  not  exclusively  royal;  parhament 
was  the  partner  and  accomplice  of  the  crown.  It 
was  the  weapon  which  the  Tudors  employed  to 
pass  Acts  of  Attainder  against  feudal  magnates 
and  Acts  of  Supremacy  against  the  church.  .   .  . 

"Henry  VIII  confined  his  sympathies  to  the  re- 
volt of  the  nation  against  Rome  and  the  revolt 
of  the  laity  against  the  priests.  .  .  .  His  real 
services  were  political,  not  religious.  He  taught 
England  a  good  deal  of  her  insular  confidence; 
he  proclaimed  the  indivisible  and  indisputable 
sovereignty  of  the  crown  in  parliament.  .  .  .  He 
carried  on  the  work  of  Henry  II  and  Edward  I, 
and  by  subduing  rival  jurisdictions  stamped  a 
final  unity  on  the  framework  of  the  government. 

"The  advisers  of  Edward  VI  embarked  on  the 
more  difficult  task  of  making  this  organization 
Protestant;  and  the  haste  with  which  they,  and 
especially  Northumberland,  pressed  on  the  change 
provoked  first  rebellion  in  1549  and  then  reaction 
under  Mary.  .  .  .  Capital  amassed  in  trade  was 
applied  to  land,  which  began  to  be  treated  as  a 
source   of   money,    not   a    source    of   men.  .  .  . 


98  English  Leadership 

Small  tenants  were  evicted,  small  holdings  consol- 
idated, commons  enclosed,  and  arable  land  con- 
verted to  pasture.  .  .  .  But  even  this  high- 
handed expropriation  of  peasants  by  their  land- 
lords stimulated  national  development.  It  cre- 
ated a  vagrant  mobile  mass  of  labor,  which 
helped  to  meet  the  demands  of  new  industrial 
markets  and  to  feed  English  oversea  enterprise. 
.  .  .  Elizabeth  was  a  sovereign  more  purely 
British  in  blood  than  any  other  since  the  Norman 
Conquest;  and  to  her  appropriately  fell  the  task 
of  completing  her  country's  national  independ- 
ence. .   .   . 

"The  astonishing  success  of  England  amid  the 
novel  conditions  of  national  rivalry  requires  some 
attempt  at  explanation.  It  seems  to  have  been 
due  to  the  singular  flexibility  of  the  English  char- 
acter and  national  system,  and  to  the  consequent 
ease  with  which  they  adapted  themselves  to  chang- 
ing environment.  .  .  .  Certainly  England  has 
never  suffered  from  that  rigidity  of  social  system 
which  has  hampered  in  the  past  the  adaptability 
of  its  rivals.  .  .  .  On  the  Continent,  however, 
class  feeling  prevented  the  governing  classes  from 
participating  in  the  expansion  of  commerce.  .  .  . 
Hence  foreign  governments  were,  as  a  rule,  less 


English  Leadings  99 

alive  and  less  responsive  to  the  commercial  inter- 
ests of  their  subjects.  .  .  . 

"There  was  no  feeling  of  caste  to  obstruct  the 
efficiency  of  English  administration.  The  nobil- 
ity were  separated  from  the  nation  by  no  fixed 
line;  there  never  was  in  England  a  nobility  of 
blood,  for  all  the  sons  of  a  noble  except  the  eldest 
were  commoners.  And  while  they  were  con- 
stantly sinking  into  the  mass  of  the  nation,  com- 
moners frequently  rose  to  the  rank  of  nobility. 
.  .  .  This  social  elasticity  enabled  the  govern- 
ment to  avail  itself  of  able  men  of  all  classes,  and 
the  efficiency  of  Tudor  administration  was  mainly 
due  to  these  recruits,  whose  genius  would  have 
been  elsewhere  neglected.  Further,  it  provided 
the  government  with  agents  peculiarly  fitted  by 
training  and  knowledge  to  deal  with  the  com- 
mercial problems  which  were  beginning  to  fill  so 
large  a  sphere  in  politics;  and,  finally,  it  rendered 
the  government  singularly  responsive  to  the  pub- 
lic opinion  of  the  classes  upon  whose  welfare  de- 
pended the  expansion  of  England.   .   .  . 

"So  far  Tudor  monarchy  had  proved  an  ade- 
quate exponent  of  English  nationalism  because 
nationalism  had  been  concerned  mainly  with  the 
external  problems  of  defense  against  foreign 
powers  and  jurisdictions.     But  with  the  defeat  of 


100  English  Leadership 

the  Spanish  Armada,  the  urgency  of  those  prob- 
lems passed  away;  and  during  the  last  fifteen 
years  of  Elizabeth's  reign  national  feelings  found 
increasing  expression  in  parliament  and  in  popu- 
lar literature.  ...  In  domestic  politics  a  rift  ap- 
peared between  the  monarchy  and  the  nation. 
For  one  thing  the  alliance,  forged  by  Henry  VIII 
between  the  crown  and  parliament,  against  the 
church,  was  being  changed  into  an  alliance  be- 
tween the  crown  and  the  church  against  the  par- 
liament, because  parliament  was  beginning  to  give 
expression  to  democratic  ideas  of  government  in 
state  and  church  which  threatened  the  principle 
of  personal  rule  common  to  monarchy  and  to 
episcopacy.  .  .  .  Popular  acquiescence  in  strong 
personal  monarchy  was  beginning  to  waver  now 
that  the  need  for  it  was  disappearing  with  the 
growing  security  of  national  independence.  Peo- 
ple could  afford  the  luxuries  of  liberty  and  party 
strife  when  their  national  existence  was  placed  be- 
yond the  reach  of  danger;  and  a  national  demand 
for  a  greater  share  of  self-government,  which  was 
to  wreck  the  house  of  Stuart,  was  making  itself 
heard  before,  on  March  24,  1603,  the  last  sov- 
ereign of  the  line  which  had  made  England  a 
really  national  state  passed  away." 

The  period  of  quasi-absolute  monarchy  in  Eng- 


English  Leadings  loi 

land  ended  practically  when  Queen  Elizabeth 
died,  for  the  attempts  of  her  immediate  successors 
to  prolong  it  only  hastened  and  perfected  the  res- 
toration of  constitutional  law.  If  the  crown  had 
passed  to  an  English-born  heir,  acceptable  to  the 
loyalty  which  Elizabeth  had  inspired,  the  arbi- 
trary tenor  of  government  probably  would  not 
have  had  an  early  check;  but  here,  again,  we  have 
a  singular  concatenation  of  events,  helpful  to  the 
renewed  investment  of  the  people  with  controlling 
political  power.  The  king  who  came  to  the  throne 
was  not  only  unwelcome,  as  a  Scot,  but  personally 
incapable  of  commanding  reverence,  affection,  or 
even  respect.  The  twenty-two  years  of  his  reign 
were  a  trial  to  English  loyalty  which  left  it  very 
weak.  His  son,  the  first  Charles,  had  winning 
personal  qualities  which  might  have  restored  the 
prestige  of  the  crown  if  he  had  not  been  so  in- 
tolerably arrogant,  and  if  his  tyrannical  temper 
had  not  been  excited  especially  against  the  rising 
Puritanism  of  the  time.  His  was  the  one  chal- 
lenge to  rebellion  that  could  not  fail  to  call  it  out; 
and  the  doubling  of  the  animus  of  revolt,  by  re- 
ligious' and  political  provocations,  insured  its  suc- 
cess. The  transiency  of  the  ensuing  overthrow 
of  the  monarchy,  and  the  restoration  of  the  Stuart 
kings  with  nothing  of  their  old  pretensions  with- 


102  English  Leadership 

drawn,  are  facts  of  the  least  possible  significance 
in  English  constitutional  history.  They  come  by 
accident,  we  may  say,  as  an  interruption  between 
the  trial  and  execution  of  Charles  I,  in  1649, 
and  the  throning  of  William  and  Mary  by 
act  of  parliament,  in  1689.  The  revolution  of 
1689,  with  its  Bill  of  Rights  and  its  Act  of  Settle- 
ment, were  the  outcome,  the  completion,  of  the 
revolution  of  1649;  ^"^  in  both  there  was  only  a 
slow  execution  of  the  doom  that  lay  on  absolutism 
in  England  from  the  day  that  Queen  Elizabeth 
died. 

The  English  people  had  now,  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  established,  for  all  time  and 
beyond  question,  that  their  parliament  could  make 
and  unmake  kings;  that  the  real  sovereignty  re- 
sided there;  that  the  seat  of  its  power  was  more 
in  the  Commons  than  in  the  Lords;  that  nothing 
could  be  law  without  parliamentary  enactment, 
that  no  law  could  be  suspended  in  operation,  no 
money  exacted  from  the  nation,  no  army  raised 
or  maintained,  without  due  authority  from  parlia- 
ment; that  meetings  of  parliament  must  be  fre- 
quent, the  election  of  its  members  free,  and  free- 
dom of  speech  in  its  proceedings  unquestioned 
outside  of  itself.  The  fundamental  conditions  of 
a  government  controlled  representatively  by  the 


English  Leadings  103 

public  will  were  thus  completely  fixed  in  princi- 
ple ^ ;  but  the  means  of  control  were  in  legislation 
only.  The  administration  of  government  re- 
mained still  the  prerogative  of  royalty,  reached 
only  by  defining  enactments  of  law.  Its  practical 
transfer  to  parliament,  and  to  the  Commons  in. 
parliament,  was  yet  to  come. 

How  immeasurably,  nevertheless,  had  the  Eng- 
lish, when  they  reached  this  point,  advanced  be- 
yond all  other  peoples!  France,  under  Louis 
XIV  and  under  a  corrupt  nobility  that  bore  no 
share  of  the  crushing  taxation  which  it  helped 
the  "Grand  Monarch"  to  devour,  was  at  the  low- 
est depths  of  her  political  degradation  and  social 
misery.  The  States-General  of  the  kingdom, — 
the  old  national  council, — in  which  a  very  limited 
third  estate  had  been  represented  on  a  few  occa- 
sions in  the  distant  past  by  delegates  from  towns, 
had  had  no  meeting  since  1614.  Some  provincial 
Estates  had  been  permitted  to  meet  in  the  inter- 
val, but  the  king  was  now  perfecting  his  autocracy 
by  suppressing  them,  one  by  one.  "The  prov- 
inces," says  Tocqueville,  describing  the  conditions 

*Cf.  Stubbs,  Constitutional  History  of  England,  Vol.  II,  p. 
653:  "[Most  of  these]  were  claimed  under  Edward  III;  they 
were  won  during  the  Rebellion,  at  the  Restoration,  or  at  the 
Revolution." — Ed. 


104  English  Leadership 

that  preceded  the  Revolution,  "had  lost  their 
franchises;  the  rights  of  the  towns  were  reduced 
to  a  shadow.  No  ten  noblemen  could  meet  to 
deliberate  together  on  any  matter  without  the  ex- 
press permission  of  the  king."  "  In  the  rural  dis- 
tricts none  remained  but  such  of  the  gentry  as 
their  limited  means  compelled  to  stay  there.  .  .  . 
Perhaps  in  no  other  part  of  the  world  had  the 
peasantry  ever  lived  so  entirely  alone."  * 

Among  German  peoples  there  seem  to  have 
been  less  visible  signs  of  political  life,  outside  the 
petty  courts  of  its  innumerable  princelings,  than 
there  had  been  in  the  days  of  Luther  and  Charles 
V.  There  was  still  an  active  commercial  life 
in  the  free  imperial  cities,  but  nothing  of  po- 
litical life.  The  oligarchical  character  of  their 
municipal  freedom  had  become  complete.  In  the 
provinces  of  the  Austrian  dominion,  including 
most  of  Italy,  and  in  Spain  and  the  Spanish  Neth- 
erlands, despotism  was  still  unrelieved.  The  gov- 
ernment of  the  Dutch  Netherlands,  conducted  with 
singular  liSerality  in  many  matters,  was  a  govern- 
ment, nevertheless,  in  which  the  people  at  large 
had  no  voice.  Popular  elections  there  were  as  yet 
unknown.    The  States-General  of  the  so-called  re- 

*  Quoted  from  Tocqueville,  On  the  State  of  Society  in  France 
before  1789,  pp.  205,  223. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  105 

public,  and  the  provincial  assemblies,  too,  were 
composed  of  members  chosen  by  self-elected  mag- 
istrates of  the  cities;  the  stadtholderships  had 
been  made  hereditary  in  the  house  of  Orange, 
and  the  prerogatives  of  the  office  were  superior 
to  those  of  the  English  king.  In  Sweden,  the  na- 
tional Estates  were  so  broken  in  spirit  that,  in 
1693,  they  proclaimed  King  Charles  XI  as  "an 
absolute  sovereign,"  "who  had  the  power  and 
right  to  rule  his  kingdom  as  he  pleased."  In 
Switzerland,  outside  of  the  three  old  Forest  can- 
tons where  the  confederacy  had  its  birth,  the  peas- 
antry— the  bulk  of  the  people — were  struggling, 
in  frequent  insurrections,  to  escape  from  condi- 
tions which  made  them  little  better  than  serfs. 

Nowhere,  at  the  best,  had  other  peoples  won 
a  footing  in  the  body  politic  as  substantial  and  as 
safely  affirmed  to  them  as  that  which  had  come 
into  the  possession  of  the  English  about  three  cen- 
turies before.  In  the  passage  of  western  Europe 
from  mediaeval  to  modern  conditions  of  life,  the 
English  had  found  openings  for  political  improve- 
ment which  no  other  people  could  use.  Says  Toc- 
queville,  with  his  fine  political  discernment:  "In 
England  the  feudal  system  was  substantially  abol- 
ished in  the  seventeenth  century;  all  classes  of  so- 
ciety  began   to    intermingle,   the    pretensions    of 


io6  English  Leadership 

birth  were  effaced,  the  aristocracy  was  thrown 
open,  wealth  was  becoming  power,  equality  was 
established  before  the  law,  public  employments 
were  open  to  all,  the  press  becam.e  free,  the  de- 
bates of  parliament  public;  every  one  of  them 
new  principles,  unknown  to  the  society  of  the  mid- 
dle ages.  It  is  precisely  these  new  elements,  grad- 
ually and  skillfully  incorporated  with  the  ancient 
constitution  of  England,  which  have  revived  with- 
out endangering  it,  and  filled  it  with  new  life  and 
vigor  without  endangering  its  ancient  forms."  ^ 
Down  to  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century 
and  even  into  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth, 
the  political  advance  of  the  English  had  been 
wholly  toward  the  upbuilding  of  legislative  inde- 
pendence and  authority  in  their  parliament  and  of 
judicial  independence  and  authority  in  their  courts. 
But  now  there  began  a  movement  in  the  evolution 
of  popular  self-government  along  new  lines, — a 
movement  which  led  to  the  actual  transfer  of  all 
executive  responsibility  and  power  from  crown  to 
parliament,  reducing  the  monarchy  to  a  fiction  and 
proving  convenient  in  many  practical  ways.  This 
new  departure  in  constitutional  construction  was 
made  without  any  deliberate  planning  or  intent. 

'  Quoted  from  Tocqueville,  On  the  State  of  Society  in  France 
before  lySg,  pp.  29-30. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  107 

["It  is*  so  much  easier,  in  discussing  the  causes 
and  stages  of  a  political  contest,  to  generalize 
from  the  results  than  to  trace  the  growth  of  the 
principles  maintained  by  the  actors,  that  the  his- 
torian is  in  some  danger  of  substituting  his  own 
formulated  conclusions  for  the  programme  of  the 
leaders,  and  of  giving  them  credit  for  a  far  more 
definite  scheme  and  more  conscious  political  sa- 
gacity than  they  would  ever  have  claimed  for 
themselves."]  If  we  have  warrant  for  saying  that 
circumstances,  thus  far  in  English  history,  had  fa- 
vored the  political  aggrandizement  of  the  middle 
classes  of  the  people,  we  may  now  say,  with  equal 
warrant,  that  circumstances  became  dictatorial 
and  compulsory  to  that  end.  They  brought,  first, 
a  woman  to  the  throne,  in  the  person  of  Queen 
Anne,  who  lacked  the  force  of  character  necessary 
for  independence  in  the  exercise  of  her  regal  func- 
tions, and  then  after  Queen  Anne,  a  foreign  prince 
who  was  hopelessly  disabled  by  total  ignorance  of 
the  English  language,  by  equally  total  ignorance 
of  England  and  its  affairs,  and  by  his  dependence 
on  one  supporting  party  against  another  which 
denied  his  right  to  the  crown.  Queen  Anne  could 
sit  in  council  with  her  ministers,  listen  to  their  dis- 

*  Cf.  Stubbs,   Constitutional  History  of  England,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
537-5.38-— Ed. 


io8  English  Leadership 

cusslons,  take  some  part  in  them,  perhaps,  and 
possibly  form  opinions  of  her  own.  George  I 
could  not.  She  deferred  to  her  ministers,  and 
gave  them  a  generally  free  hand;  consequently, 
during  her  reign  of  twelve  years,  royalty  slipped 
considerably  into  the  background  of  English  poli- 
tics. In  the  thirteen  years  of  her  tongue-tied  suc- 
cessor, who  was  never  anything  but  an  alien  and  a 
stranger  to  his  nominal  subjects,  the  royal  figure 
went  quite  into  eclipse,  behind  the  Prime  Minis- 
try and  the  cabinet  which  Walpole  then  organ- 
ized. That  cabinet  ministry  became  the  respon- 
sible and  real  executive  of  the  government, — re- 
sponsible to  parliament  but  not  to  the  king. 
[Macy  and  Gannaway  summarizes  the  stages  in 
the  evolution  of  cabinet  government  as  follows:^ 
*'  ( I  )  There  was  the  inner  circle  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil and  of  the  earlier  Continual  Council  on  whom 
the  king  relied  for  advice  in  government.  The 
name  Cabinet  was  applied  to  this  group  as  early 
as  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  (2)  Charles  II  began 
to  substitute  the  inner  circle  in  place  of  the  Privy 
Council.  (3)  William  III  and  Anne  identified 
the  Cabinet  with  party  leaders.     (4)  George  I  ab- 

*Cf.  Macy  and  Gannaway,  Comparative  Free  Government, 
p.  433;  cf.  also  A.  L.  Lowell,  Government  of  England,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  27-32. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  109 

sented  himself  from  Cabinet  meetings.  (5)  Rob- 
ert Walpole  created  the  office  of  Prime  Minister 
which  served  as  an  entering  wedge  in  the  transfer 
of  the  exercise  of  royal  prerogative  from  the  King 
to  the  Cabinet.  (6)  The  Cabinet,  supported  by 
the  House  of  Commons,  forced  George  II  to  give 
Cabinet  places  to  Pitt  and  Chesterfield.  (7)  After 
George  III  had  for  twenty-five  years  tried  to  dis- 
credit and  destroy  the  Cabinet,  its  authority  was 
restored  under  the  leadership  of  the  younger  Pitt 
as  head  of  the  Tory  party,  thus  committing  both 
parties  to  the  system.  ( 8 )  Finally,  beginning  with 
the  act  of  1832,  the  nation  is  becoming  enfran- 
chised, the  people  are  recognized  as  the  source  of 
final  authority,  there  are  frequent  changes  in  party 
rule,  and  the  people  express  their  will  by  alternate 
choice  between  two  competing  Cabinets.  The 
mechanism  is  such  that  the  people  retain  the  con- 
tinuous services  of  both  groups,  one  as  actually 
governing,  the  other  as  pointing  out  methods  of 
improvement."] 

The  evolution  of  parliamentary  government 
was  now  nearly  complete,  in  form  if  not  in  spirit, 
though  the  evolution  of  parliament  itself  was  not. 
For  the  crown  there  was  no  recovery  of  the  exec- 
utive authority  that  had  slipped  away  from  George 
I.     The  influence   of  the  first  two  Hanoverian 


no  English  Leadership 

kings  in  the  government  of  Great  Britain  was  al- 
most naught,  except  in  so  far  as  they  strove  with 
some  success  to  turn  its  foreign  policy  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  their  German  duchy.  The  strenuous 
effort  of  George  III  to  master  the  new  ministerial 
system  produced  some  temporary  disturbance  and 
some  national  misfortunes,  but  had  no  reactionary 
effect.  And  even  in  that  royal  revolt  there  was  no 
revival  of  the  pretensions  of  the  Stuart  kings.  It 
was  little  more  than  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
sovereign  to  secure  pliant  ministers,  and  to  con- 
trol parliament  by  his  own  use  of  the  methods  of 
corrupting  influence  which  recent  ministries  had 
employed.  Later,  in  1834,  William  IV  exercised 
what  had  been,  in  former  times,  an  undoubted  pre- 
rogative of  the  crown,  by  dismissing  a  ministry 
which  commanded  the  support  of  a  majority  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  his  action  was  con- 
demned as  unconstitutional, — condemned  so  de- 
cisively that  no  sovereign  has  essayed  it  since. 
This  was  the  last  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  crown 
to  resist  the  supremacy  of  parliament,  whether 
practically  or  theoretically  understood,  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  government  no  less  than  in  the 
laying  of  taxes  and  the  making  of  laws.  Thus  the 
passing  of  executive  functions  from  the  king  to  a 
ministry,    responsible   to   parliament   and  practi- 


English  Leadings  ill 

tally  independent  of  the  crown,  has  been  made 
final  and  complete* 

["The  origins  ^  of  political  parties  in  England 
fall  clearly  within  the  seventeenth  century.  It  was 
the  judgment  of  Macaulay  that  the  earliest  of 
groups  to  which  the  designation  of  political  parties 
can  be  applied  were  the  Cavalier  and  Roundhead 
elements  as  aligned  after  the  adoption  of  the 
Grand  Remonstrance  by  the  Long  Parliament  in 
1641.  The  first  groups,  however,  which  may  be 
thought  of  as  essentially  analogous  to  the  political 
parties  of  the  present  day,  possessing  continuity, 
fixity  of  principles,  and  some  degree  of  compact- 
ness of  organization,  were  the  Whigs  and  Tories 
of  the  era  of  Charles  II.  Dividing  in  the  first 
instance  upon  the  issue  of  the  exclusion  of  James, 
these  two  elements,  with  the  passage  of  time,  as- 
sumed well-defined  and  fundamentally  irreconcil- 
able positions  upon  the  essential  public  questions 
of  the  day.  Broadly,  the  Whigs  stood  for  tolera- 
tion in  religion  and  for  parliamentary  supremacy 
in  government;  the  Tories  for  Anglicanism  and 
the  prerogative.  And  long  after  the  Stuart  mon- 
archy was  a  thing  of  the  past  these  two  great  par- 
ties kept  up  their  struggles  upon  these  and  other 

'Quoted  from  F.  A.  Ogg,  Governments  of  Europe,  pp.  38-39. 
—Ed. 


112  English  Leadership 

issues.  After  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  govern 
with  the  cooperation  of  both  parties,  William  III 
.  .  .  fell  back  definitely  upon  the  support  of  the 
Whigs.  At  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne,  in  1702, 
however,  the  Whigs  were  turned  out  of  office  and 
the  Tories  (who  already  had  had  a  taste  of  power 
in  1 698-1 701 )  were  put  in  control.  They  retained 
office  during  the  larger  portion  of  Queen  Anne's 
reign,  but  at  the  accession  of  George  I  they  were 
compelled  to  give  place  to  their  rivals,  and  the 
period  1714-1761  was  one  of  unbroken  Whig  as- 
cendency. This  was,  of  course,  the  period  of  the 
development  of  the  cabinet  system,  and  between 
the  rise  of  that  system  and  the  growth  of  govern- 
ment by  party  there  was  an  intimate  and  inevitable 
connection.  By  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  rule  had  become  inflexible  that  the  cabinet 
should  be  composed  of  men  who  were  in  sympathy 
with  the  party  at  the  time  dominant  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  that  the  returning  by  the  nation 
to  the  representative  chamber  of  a  majority  ad- 
verse to  the  ruling  ministry  should  be  followed  by 
the  retirement  of  the  ministry." 

"The  English  Cabinet  and  party  system  '  is  es- 

*  Quoted  from  A.  L.  Cross,  History  of  England  and  Greater 
Britain,  pp.  614-615;  cf.  also  A.  L.  Lowell,  Government  of  Eng- 
land, pp.  449-461. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  113 

pecially  notable  from  the  fact  that  Its  machinery 
is  the  most  perfect  which  has  yet  been  devised  for 
speedily  and  peacefully  voicing  the  will  of  the  peo- 
ple and  because  it  is  the  system  which  has  been 
adopted,  with  more  or  less  variation,  by  the  chief 
European  governments  in  recent  times.  It  is  es- 
sentially a  government  by  an  executive  committee 
of  Parliament  whose  members  represent  and  are 
responsible  to  the  majority  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, which,  in  its  turn,  represents  the  qualified 
voters  of  Great  Britain.  Just  as  soon  as  the  ma- 
jority withdraws  its  support  the  Ministry  either 
resigns,  or  dissolves  Parliament,  and  submits  to 
the  verdict  of  a  general  election."] 

Meanwhile  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, a  few  thoughtful  minds  in  continental  Eu- 
rope had  begun  to  study  the  lessons  In  government 
which  England  had  been  setting  before  them  for 
so  long  a  time.  In  this  movement  Montesquieu 
led  the  way  In  his  "Spirit  of  the  Laws,"  pointing 
to  England  as  the  "one  nation  in  the  world  that 
has,  for  the  direct  end  of  its  constitution,  political 
liberty,"  and  proceeding  from  that  statement  to  an 
examination  of  the  English  constitution  and  Its 
embodiment  of  "the  principles  on  which  this  lib- 
erty Is  founded."     It  was  a  timely  exposition  and 


114  English  Leadership 

made  a  deep  impression,  especially  in  France, 
where  it  succeeded  in  arousing  a  feverish  activity 
in  political  thinking.  But  French  political  thought, 
while  taking  a  strong  impulse  from  Montesquieu, 
departed  from  his  wise  historical  method  of  inves- 
tigation. The  most  influential  of  the  political 
writers,  Rousseau,  Diderot  and  his  colleagues  of 
the  "Encyclopedia," — were,  as  Tocqueville  de- 
scribed them,  predisposed  by  their  position  to  rel- 
ish general  and  abstract  theories  upon  the  subject 
of  government,  and  to  place  in  them  the  blindest 
confidence.  The  almost  immeasurable  distance  in 
which  they  lived  from  practical  duties  afforded 
them  no  experience  to  moderate  the  ardor  of  their 
character;  nothing  warned  them  of  the  obstacles 
which  the  actual  state  of  things  might  oppose  to 
reforms,  however  desirable.  They  had  no  idea 
of  the  perils  which  always  accompany  the  most 
needful  revolutions;  they  had  not  even  a  presenti- 
ment of  them,  for  the  complete  absence  of  all  po- 
litical liberty  had  the  effect  of  rendering  the  trans- 
action of  public  affairs  not  only  unknown  to  them, 
but  even  invisible.  They  were  neither  employed 
in  those  affairs  themselves,  nor  could  they  see 
what  those  employed  in  them  were  doing.  They 
were  consequently  destitute  of  that  superficial  in- 
struction  which  the   sight  of  a   free   community. 


English  Leadings  115 

and  the  tumult  of  its  discussions,  bestow  even 
upon  those  who  are  least  mixed  up  with  govern- 
ment. Thus  they  became  far  more  bold  in  inno- 
vation, more  fond  of  generalizing  and  of  a  sys- 
tem, more  disdainful  of  the  wisdom  of  antiquity, 
and  still  more  confident  in  their  individual  reason 
than  is  commonly  to  be  seen  in  authors  who  write 
speculative  books  on  politics;  and  "the  same  state 
of  ignorance  opened  to  them  the  ears  and  hearts 
of  the  people." 

And  so  it  was  that  the  desperate  French  peo- 
ple, looking  to  England  and  to  the  English  com- 
munities in  America,  with  longing  for  their  free 
institutions,  but  heedless  of  the  time  and  the  pa- 
tience that  went  to  the  making  of  those  institu- 
tions,— blind  to  the  slow  training  that  prepared 
Englishmen  and  English-Americans  for  the  use  of 
them, — were  led  into  the  riot  and  wreck  of  their 
terrible  Revolution.^  In  the  end,  however,  when 
the  madness  was  spent,  and  when  the  reaction 
from  it  was  likewise  spent,  there  came  a  school- 
time  for  Europe,  in  which  it  took  up  the  constitu- 
tions of  England  and  English-America  and  studied 
them  with  good  effect. 

^For  an  eminently  sane  discussion  of  "The  Principles  of 
1789,"  see  J.  H.  Robinson's  essay  on  this  subject  in  The  New 
History,  pp.  195-235. — Ed. 


Ii6  English  Leadership 

For  a  whole  generation  the  excesses  of  the 
French  Revolution  were  deplorably  prejudicial  to 
democratic  doctrines  of  government;  so  much  so, 
even  in  England,  as  to  check  for  that  period  the 
further  development  of  the  national  constitution 
on  popular  lines.  Otherwise  the  broadening  of 
the  representation  of  the  people  in  parliament 
would  have  had  an  earlier  beginning.  From  the 
late  thirteenth  century  to  the  early  nineteenth,  it  is 
proper  enough  to  call  the  English  government  a 
representative  one,  because  the  will  of  a  very  ef- 
fective and  important  section  of  the  people  was 
voiced  in  parliament;  but  the  constituents  of  that 
section  were  still  far  from  being  the  commons  of 
England,  in  any  right  sense  of  that  term.  [For 
those  millions  of  the  understratum  of  English  so- 
ciety, whose  rights  had  been  so  vainly  championed, 
five  hundred  years  before,  by  the  "visionary" 
Wycliffe,  had  not  even  yet  been  able  to  impress 
their  will  upon  the  councils  of  the  nation.  But 
again  that  strangely  favoring  combination  of  geo- 
graphic influence  and  historic  circumstance  enabled 
the  English  people  to  make  yet  further  gains  in 
their  struggle  toward  a  more  truly  democratic 
government.  For  it  was  this  strangely  favoring 
combination  that  made  possible  the  Industrial  Rev- 


English  Leadings  117 

olutlon  ^ ;  and  it  was  the  Industrial  Revolution, 
which,  in  turn,  made  possible  those  social  and  po- 
litical reforms  of  the  nineteenth  century  In  which 
the  English  people  have  so  markedly  led  the 
world. 

This  spirit  of  reform  was  first  manifested,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  the  re- 
constltution  of  the  House  of  Commons.]  This 
branch  of  parliament  embraced,  in  1831,  the 
whole  titled  aristocracy  of  the  kingdom  below  the 
peerage,  and  the  untitled  but  aristocratic  "gentry," 
along  with  a  part  of  the  well-to-do  class;  but  none 
of  the  landless  population  of  the  rural  districts, 
whether  farmers  or  laborers,  and  few  of  the  work- 
ing class  of  the  towns,  had  votes.  Out  of  a  total 
population  of  22,000,000  In  the  United  Kingdom, 
the  voters  numbered  less  than  450,000.  ^  Most 
of  the  boroughs  and  towns  represented  were  not 
the  later  growths  of  modern  industry  and  trade, 
but  the  decayed  country  market-places  and  hamlets 
of  a  long-past  age.  Fifty-six  of  these,  with  less 
than  2,000  of  total  population,  were  electing  1 1 1 
of  the  658  members  of  the  House  of  Commons, 

^  For  discussion  of  this  point,  see,  in  this  volume,  the  essay 
on  "The  Geographic  Factor  in  English  History,"  by  Donald  E. 
Smith.— Ed. 

*  Based  upon  W.  Heaton,  The  Three  Reforms  of  Parlia- 
ment, chap.  I. — Ed. 


Ii8  English  Leadership 

and  30  others,  having  less,  altogether,  than  4,000 
of  population,  were  electing  60  more.  ^  But  that 
was  not  the  worst  of  the  facts.  Most  of  these 
"rotten  boroughs,"  as  they  were  styled,  were  en- 
veloped In  the  estates  of  the  great  land-owning 
lords;  the  voters  were  their  tenants,  and  a  free 
election  In  them  was  never  known.  Such  cities 
of  modern  origin  and  great  Importance  as  Man- 
chester, Birmingham,  and  Leeds,  had  no  repre- 
sentation, and  that  of  London  Itself  was  small. 
What  bore  the  name  of  the  House  of  Commons 
had  Its  representative  commission,  we  can  see, 
from  a  small  fraction  of  even  the  well-to-do  mid- 
dle class,  and  not  at  all  from  the  tollers  of  the 
commonalty.  ^ 

This  dearth  of  democratic  element  In  the  Eng- 
lish representative  system  was  persistent  until 
1832,  when  an  almost  revolutionary  excitement  of 
popular  feeling  compelled  the  adoption  of  the 
first  measure  of  parliamentary  reform.  This 
went  far  enough  to  disfranchise  the  most  rotten 

*  Based  upon  T.  E.  May,  Constitutional  History  of  England, 
Vol.   I,  chap.  6.— Ed. 

'For  an  account  of  the  Industrial  Revolution  and  its  effects 
upon  problems  of  government,  see  E.  P.  Cheyney,  Industrial  and 
Social  History  of  England,  pp.  199-276;  F.  W.  Tickner,  Social 
and  Industrial  History  of  England,  pp.  530-540;  and  F.  S. 
Chapin,  Historical  Introduction  to  Social  Economy,  pp.  147- 
260. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  119 

of  the  boroughs  and  to  give  representation  to 
forty-two  towns  and  metropolitan  districts  which 
had  had  no  voice  in  parHament  before,  ^  It  low- 
ered the  property-owning  or  rate  and  rent-paying 
qualifications  for  voting  enough  to  popularize  the 
elections  considerably,  and  to  lessen  materially  the 
aristocratic  character  and  spirit  of  the  House  of 
Commons;  but  the  greater  mass  of  the  people 
were  left  still  without  votes.  For  another  third 
of  a  century  they  remained  unrepresented,  but  not 
unconscious  of  their  rights.  Agitations  to  secure  a 
broader  popular  enfranchisement  were  soon  start- 
ed, taking  form  in  what  is  known  as  the  Chartist 
movement,  which  disquieted  the  country,  more  or 
less,  from  1838  to  1848.  The  demand  made  was 
for  the  passage  of  an  act,  styled  the  People's 
Charter,  embodying  constitutional  changes  on  six 
points, — universal  manhood  suffrage,  equal  elec- 
toral districts,  vote  by  ballot,  annual  parliaments, 
no  property  qualification  for  parliament,  and  pay- 
ment to  members  for  parliamentary  service.  Of 
these  six  demands  two  have  since  been  fully  satis- 
fied by  the  introduction  of  the  ballot  in  1872  and 
by  the  removal  of  the  property  qualification  for 
a    seat   in    parliament.      Manhood   suffrage    was 

*  Supported  by  T.  E.  May,  Constitutional  History  of  England, 
Vol.  I,  chap.  6.— Ed. 


120         •  English  Leadership 

made  nearly  universal  and  electoral  districts  nearly 
equal  by  the  second  and  third  Reform  Bills,  passed, 
respectively,  in  1867  and  1884-5.  Service  in  Par- 
liament has  not  yet  been  salaried,  and  the  demand 
for  an  annual  election  of  parliaments  is  not  likely 
to  be  renewed.  Otherwise,  the  Chartist  agitators 
were  only  a  few  years  in  advance  of  their  time. 
[The  Chartist  movement,  far  from  losing  strength 
In  the  twentieth  century,  seems  to  be  gaining  in 
vitality  all  the  time.  Obscured  by  the  war,  the 
Electoral  Reform  Bill  of  191 8  must,  nevertheless, 
take  Its  place  alongside  the  great  Reform  Bills  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  for  the  sweeping  away 
of  many  of  the  disqualifications  for  the  male  fran- 
chise, and  the  endowment  of  between  five  and  six 
million  women  with  the  right  to  vote  Is  no  in- 
significant achievement.  Another  Chartist  demand 
recently  satisfied  Is  the  payment  of  salaries  to  the 
members  of  the  House  of  Commons.  Thus  far 
four  points  of  Chartism  have  been  adopted  alto- 
gether, and  a  fifth,  advocating  annual  elections 
of  Parliament,  has  been  approached  somewhat  in 
the  Parliament  Act  of  191 1,  which  reduces  the 
maximum  duration  of  Parliament  to  five  years. 
Such  legislation  is  a  splendid  justification  of  Car- 
lyle's  statement,  made  in  1839:  "The  matter  of 
Chartism  is  weighty,  deep-rooted,   far-extending, 


English  Leadings  I2I 

did  not  begin  yesterday;  will  by  no  means  end  this 
day  or  to-morrow."] 

[Ever  since  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  England 
has  been  engaged  in  the  refinement  of  those  demo- 
cratic institutions  which  she  had  evolved  through 
the  centuries,  proving  to  an  admiring  world  that 
such  institutions  are  the  best  instruments  for  fur- 
ther political  progress.  In  1835  was  accomplished 
the  reform  of  town  government,  the  abuses  of 
which  had  been  as  notorious  as  those  of  Parlia- 
ment before  1832.  The  Municipal  Corporations 
Act  of  1835  not  only  did  away  with  the  corruption 
in  the  towns,  but  also  established  for  the  first  time 
the  principle  of  local  self-government  within  the 
kingdom.  Supplementing,  but  not  completing  the 
work  of  this  act,  comes  the  County  Councils  Act 
of  1888,  which  democratized  the  administration 
of  county  governments.  The  last  step  in  this  di- 
rection is  the  Parish  Councils  Act  of  1894,  which 
extended  the  principle  of  local  self-government  to 
smaller  units  of  the  nation  than  had  been  treated 
in  the  two  preceding  acts.  The  system  of  local 
government  in  England  is  now  one  of  the  best 
examples  of  the  democracy  of  English  institutions. 
In  the  first  place,  local  government  is  close  to 
the  daily  life  of  Englishmen.  The  county  divisions 
in  England  are  much  smaller  than  those  of  our 


122  English  Leadership 

American  states,  and  the  spirit  of  community  is 
consequently  stronger.  Besides,  in  England  there 
is  no  tendency,  as  there  is  in  other  countries,  either 
purposely  or  from  slipshod  habits  of  political 
thinking  to  confuse  local  with  national  issues.  The 
result  is  a  cleaner,  more  responsible  and  more 
intelligent  system  of  local  self-government  than 
any  other  state  has  evolved.  It  was  quite  natural, 
in  a  century  of  reform  of  the  machinery  of  gov- 
ernment, that  a  coincident  step  should  be  the  ap- 
pointment to  positions  in  the  Civil  Service  on  the 
basis  of  standing  in  open  competitive  examinations. 
The  reform  of  the  Civil  Service  in  England  gave 
an  impetus  to  a  similar  movement  in  America, 
with  the  result  that  the  Civil  Service  of  the  two 
great  English-speaking  peoples  is  based  on  as 
democratic  a  system  of  appointment  as  has  yet 
been  devised.  A  third  line  of  reform,  leading  to 
simplification  in  the  organization  of  the  courts,  is 
indicated  in  the  great  Judicature  Act  of  1873, 
which  together  with  an  Amending  Act,  consoli- 
dated the  higher  courts  of  the  realm  into  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  Judicature,  whose  two  great 
branches  are  the  High  Court  of  Justice  and  the 
Court  of  Appeals.  But  the  most  far-reaching  of 
all,  one  that  goes  back  to  the  constitution  of  par- 
liament, something  not  so  much   a  reform   as  a 


English  Leadings  123 

recapitulation  of  previous  tendencies  from  the  days 
of  Magna  Carta,  is  the  Parliament  Act  of  191 1. 
The  open  intention  of  the  Act  is  to  render  power- 
less the  present  upper  house,  so  that  the  substitu- 
tion of  a  "Second  Chamber  constituted  on  a  pop- 
ular instead  of  hereditary  basis,"  to  quote  the 
Act  itself,  may  be  more  easily  obtained.  Accord- 
ing to  the  terms  of  this  Act,  money  bills  become 
law  within  one  month  after  passing  the  Commons, 
with  or  without  the  concurrence  of  the  Lords;  all 
other  bills  passed  by  the  Commons  in  three  suc- 
cessive sessions,  sent  up  to  the  Lords  at  least  one 
month  before  the  end  of  each  session  and  rejected 
each  time  by  the  Lords,  are  to  be  presented  for 
the  royal  signature,  provided  that  two  years  have 
elapsed  since  their  introduction  into  the  Commons. 
The  spirit  of  this  Act  is  the  spirit  of  the  English 
people  throughout  their  constitutional  history,  a 
summing  up  of  past  progress,  an  intimation  of 
future  progress,  a  milestone  in  the  free  expression 
of  English  political  thought.] 

We  have  now  traced  the  evolution  of  popular 
self-government  by  the  agency  of  elected  repre- 
sentatives, and  find  it  to  have  been  a  process  that 
worked  almost  exclusively  in  the  political  experi- 
ence of  the  English  peoples,  producing  institutions 
of  constitutional  monarchy  in  Great  Britain  which 


124  English  Leadership 

in  the  course  of  her  expansion  were  to  become 
models  for  the  democratizing  and  constitutionaliz- 
ing  of  government  in  every  other  part  of  the  world. 
Without  doubt,  this  pioneering  and  leading  of  all 
civilized  society  into  or  toward  the  democratic 
state  has  been  the  most  important  and  distin- 
guished function  of  the  English  peoples  in  history. 
By  getting  the  first  training  that  self-government 
gives  to  the  self-governing  multitude,  they  were 
the  first  of  Europeans  who  could  make  much,  in  a 
substantial,  lasting  way,  of  the  great  opportunities 
for  expansive  action,  influence  and  power  that, 
three  hundred  years  ago  awaited  the  use  of  man. 
The  Old  World  was  then  entering  on  the  third 
of  the  three  stages  of  civilization  which  Carl  Rit- 
ter,  the  geographer,  defined  as  ( i )  the  potatnic, — 
developed  in  extensive  river  valleys,  such  as  those 
of  the  Nile,  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  and  the 
Ganges;  (2)  the  thalassic, — nourished  by  the  in- 
fluences and  commercial  stimulations  of  a  great 
inland  sea,  like  the  Mediterranean;  and,  (3)  the 
oceanic, — which  opened  to  Europe  when  explora- 
tion of  the  broad  Atlantic  was  launched  from  its 
western  coast.  Egypt  and  Babylonia  led  the  march 
of  civilization  in  its  first  stage;  Phoenicia,  Greece, 
Rome  and  mediaeval  Italy  in  the  second;  what 
peoples  would  be  in  the  van  of  the  third?    Nobody, 


English  Leadings  125 

at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  could 
have  looked  for  that  leadership  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  British  Isles. 

When  Europe  discovered  America,  the  South 
Sea,  and  the  ocean-way  to  the  Indies,  and  found 
the  earth  to  be  really  a  globe,  the  English  had 
less  apparent  preparation  than  most  of  their  neigh- 
bors for  exploiting  these  discoveries  and  becoming 
workers  in  a  new  construction  of  the  general  cir- 
cumstances of  human  life.  Islanders  though  they 
were,  and  of  Saxon  and  Norman  blood,  their  sea- 
going activities  were  slight.  They  took  a  minor 
part  in  the  commerce  of  the  time.  Their  trade 
with  the  Continent  was  conducted  mostly  by  the 
Hanseatic  and  other  leagues  organized  by  enter- 
prising merchants  of  the  German  towns.  English 
character  showed  singularly  little  of  the  spirit  of 
adventure.  After  a  long  series  of  French  and 
civil  wars,  they  seemed  to  be  settling  down  to  a 
rather  unambitious  career, — busied  in  the  main 
with  their  sheep  pastures  and  their  farms. 

A  sense  of  free  individuality,  however,  a  con- 
sciousness of  responsibility,  and  capable  habits  of 
associated  action,  acquired,  through  many  genera- 
tions, in  their  parish  vestries,  their  courts  and 
their  parliament,  had  fitted  these  industrious 
farmers  and  burghers,  as  nothing  else  could,  for 


126  English  Leadership 

that  prosperous  transplantation  of  themselves 
which  has  rooted  young  nations  of  English  stock 
in  all  quarters  of  the  earth.  In  their  schools 
of  self-government  they  acquired  many  superior 
qualities  which  were  to  overcome  France  in 
America  and  supplant  the  Dutch  in  South  Africa, 
found  this  great  federal  republic  of  the  United 
States,  dominate  India  and  Egypt,  and  give  a  lead 
to  English  influence  in  history  such  as  no  other 
race  is  likely  ever  to  over-ride  or  even  to  over- 
take. 

At  the  opening  of  the  modern  era,  the  Portu- 
guese and  Spaniards  were  in  the  forefront  of  the 
colonial  movement,  both  in  achievement  and  in 
opportunity.  That  they  did  not  make  the  most  of 
their  primacy,  and  maintained  it  but  a  little  time, 
was  consequent,  no  doubt,  on  more  than  one  cause. 
The  tropical  regions  to  which  they  were  led  for 
their  colonial  undertakings  could  hardly,  under 
any  circumstances,  have  nourished  communities  of 
European  vigor  and  pith.  Moreover,  the  success 
of  the  Spaniards  in  finding  precious  metals  might 
have  spoiled  the  constitution  and  the  character  of 
any  young  colony  of  that  age.  Furthermore,  in  los- 
ing all  experience  of  political  freedom,  the  Span- 
iards had  also  lost  the  power  to  generate  the  least 
degree  of  organic  self-activity  and  self-nourished 


English  Leadings  127 

vitality  in  their  colonial  society.  It  had  to  be  a 
piece  of  political  mechanism,  officially  constructed 
and  officially  worked,  from  the  central  source  of 
all  power,  at  Madrid.  By  this  fact  alone  it  was 
made  impossible  for  the  Spanish  settlements  in 
America  to  become  self-dependent  political  or- 
ganisms such  as  the  English  settlements  there  and 
elsewhere  became  at  a  later  day. 

The  wars  of  the  Elizabethan  age  with  Spain 
started  the  English  on  a  maritime  career;  but  the 
ultimate  expansion  of  their  little  kingdom  into 
the  world-wide  empire  of  a  world-spread  race 
grew  from  nothing  in  the  half-piratical  exploits  of 
Hawkins  and  Drake.  Nor  can  it  be  said  to  have 
grown  from  the  undertakings  of  Raleigh,  the  one 
Englishman  of  the  sixteenth  century  who,  with  the 
sagacity  of  a  statesman,  the  imagination  of  a  poet, 
and  the  spirit  of  an  adventurer,  looked  abroad 
and  divined  the  future  of  the  New  World.  Even 
the  first  attempt  of  the  Virginia  Company  to  plant 
a  settlement  at  Jamestown  was  too  near  failure 
to  be  taken  for  the  true  beginning  of  English 
achievement  in  colonization.  ["English  piracy  in 
the  Channel  was  notorious  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  in  the  sixteenth  it  attained  patriotic  propor- 
tions. Henry  VII  had  encouraged  Cabot's  voyage 
to  Newfoundland,  but  the  papal  partition  of  new- 


128  English  Leadership 

found  lands  between  Spain  and  Portugal  barred 
to  England  the  door  of  legitimate,  peaceful  ex- 
pansion; and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this 
prohibition  made  many  converts  to  Protestantism 
among  English  seafaring  folk.  Even  Mary  could 
not  prevent  her  subjects  from  preying  on  Spanish 
and  Portuguese  commerce  and  colonies;  and  with 
Elizabeth's  accession  preying  grew  into  a  national 
pastime.  Hawkins  broke  into  Spanish  monopoly 
in  the  West  Indies,  Drake  burst  into  their  Pacific 
preserves,  and  circumvented  their  defenses;  and 
a  host  of  followers  plundered  nearly  every  Spanish 
and  Portuguese  colony.  .  .  .  National  unity  and 
the  fertile  mingling  of  classes  had  generated  this 
expansive  energy,  for  the  explorers  included  earls 
as  well  as  humble  mariners  and  traders;  and  all 
ranks,  from  the  queen  downwards,  took  shares  in 
their  'adventures.'  They  had  thus  acquired  a  body 
of  knowledge  and  experience  which  makes  it  mis- 
leading to  speak  of  their  blundering  into  empire. 
They  soon  learnt  to  concentrate  their  energies  upon 
those  quarters  of  the  globe  in  which  expansion  was 
easiest  and  most  profitable."  ^] 

Here,  again,  as  in  the  shaping  of  the  English 
polity  within  England  itself,  helpful  and  guiding 

*  Quoted  from  A.   F.  Pollard,  History  of  England,  pp.   io8- 
109,   150. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  129 

circumstances  arose,  strangely  effective  and  op- 
portune,— circumstances  which  carried  Englishmen 
of  the  freest  spirit,  of  the  strongest  character,  of 
the  best  political  training,  out  from  their  old  be- 
loved homes,  to  inhospitable  wildernesses,  across  a 
forbidding  sea,  not  for  gold-seeking  or  for  con- 
quest, but  for  the  resolute  making  of  new  homes, 
a  new  country  and  a  new  citizenship  for  themselves 
and  their  posterity.  The  circumstances  which  con- 
tributed to  this  great  end  were  those  that  brought 
the  English  government  into  contention  with  re- 
ligious beliefs  among  the  people,  as  well  as  into 
assaults  upon  their  political  rights.  In  successive 
movements,  first  of  the  Pilgrim  Independents  to 
Plymouth,  then  of  Puritans  to  Massachusetts  Bay, 
of  Catholics  to  Maryland,  and  of  Quakers  to  Penn- 
sylvania, this  contention  exiled  four  bodies,  well 
picked  from  the  best  of  English  folk,  such  as  could 
not  have  been  won  in  any  other  way  for  the  pio- 
neering task  which  they  took  upon  themselves.  It 
is  inconceivable  that  a  settlement  of  the  uninviting 
region  of  New  England,  by  people  of  so  sterling 
a  class,  could  ever  have  been  brought  about  by  any 
other  influence  than  this ;  or  that  an  equal  develop- 
ment of  that  region  by  people  of  any  class  could 
have  been  accomplished  otherwise  within  the  next 
hundred  years.  Then,  again,  by  a  different  turn  of 


130  English  Leadership 

the  same  circumstances,  when  large  numbers  of 
the  beaten  royalists  of  the  Civil  War  left  their 
English  homes,  another  rare  selection  from  the 
best  bred  manhood  of  England  was  sent  over  to 
the  struggling  colonies  of  Virginia  and  Maryland, 
to  leaven  them  with  new  spirit  and  new  strength. 
[The  thought  that  Mr.  Earned  evidently  had  in 
mind  was  that  these  beaten  royalists  were  from  the 
governing  class  in  England, — men  trained,  by  ex- 
perience that  was  in  turn  backed  by  centuries  of 
family  tradition,  to  be  leaders  of  the  commoners. 
This  characteristic  of  the  Virginia  settlers,  coupled 
with  the  development  of  a  representative,  county 
type  of  government  necessitated  by  their  widely 
scattered  plantations,  doubtless  explains  to  a  large 
extent  the  marked  leadership  shown  by  Virginia 
in  the  events  leading  to  the  framing  of  the  Ameri- 
can Constitution.^] 

These  favors  of  circumstances  were  the  most 
extraordinary  that  ever  attended  the  pioneering  of 
colonization;  but  let  us  not  forget  how  entirely 
their  operation  depended  on  the  moderation  of 
temper  which  even  an  oppressive  government  in 

*  Facts  in  support  of  such  a  view  can  be  gathered  from 
Turner's  The  Risf  of  the  Ne^(}  West,  Farrand's  The  Framing 
of  the  Constitution,  and  Beard's  Economic  Interpretation  of  the 
Constitution.  Cf.  A.  F.  Pollard,  History  of  England,  pp.  151- 
152. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  131 

England  was  compelled  to  preserve.  From  re- 
ligious persecution  in  Spain  and  France  there  was 
no  such  escape.  Spanish  America  offered  no 
refuge  from  the  Inquisition  to  heretic  Christians 
or  to  Moriscos  or  Jews;  and  the  Huguenots  were 
shut  out  from  New  France.  Thus  England  alone, 
by  virtue  of  the  liberalizing  influences  in  her  po- 
litical system,  could  limit  her  own  oppression  by 
opening  her  colonies  to  the  oppressed,  and  could 
obtain  therefrom  so  powerful  and  so  determining 
an  impetus  to  the  fulfillment  of  her  destiny. 

"If  France,"  says  Parkman,  "instead  of  exclud- 
ing Huguenots,  had  given  them  an  asylum  in  the 
west,  and  left  them  there  to  work  out  their  own 
destinies,  Canada  would  never  have  been  a  British 
province,  and  the  United  States  would  have  shared 
their  vast  domain  with  a  vigorous  population  of 
self-governing  Frenchmen."  But  in  the  govern- 
ment of  France,  there  was  more  than  despotic 
intolerance  to  make  it  ruinous  to  colonial  under- 
takings. As  in  the  case  of  Spain,  the  centralized 
absolutism  of  France,  robbing  the  people  of  all 
freedom  and  capacity  for  self-action,  made  suc- 
cessful colonization  from  that  country  impossible. 
French  settlements  in  America  were  trading  sta- 
tions, religious  missions,  military  posts, — every- 
thing except  the  social  and  political  "plantations" 


132  English  Leadership 

of  the  English.  There  was  nothing  spontaneous 
about  them,  nothing  organic  and  vital,  nothing 
growing  in  a  natural  way.  "Root,  stem  and 
branch,"  to  quote  Parkman  again.  New  France 
"was  the  nursling  of  authority."  The  colony  in  all 
its  parts  and  in  all  its  workings,  was  an  official, 
artificial  structure.  In  the  main,  its  white  inhabi- 
tants were  officially  collected  in  France  and  shipped 
out  on  official  requisitions  from  Quebec;  and  when 
these  recruited  colonists  wanted  wives,  they,  too, 
were  officially  recruited  and  shipped.  Of  course, 
colonists  of  that  make-up  could  not  be  the  founders 
of  such  communities  as  the  English  were  planting 
farther  south. 

Even  the  Dutch,  with  all  their  apparent  liberty 
of  spirit  and  action,  were  disabled  by  their  political 
constitution  from  prosperous  rivalry  with  the  Eng- 
lish in  colonization.  There  was  an  absolutism,  in 
iheir  case  not  royal,  but  commercial,  which  blighted 
their  colonial  plantings.  Dominated  in  their  gov- 
ernment at  home  by  the  manufactures  of  the  towns 
in  their  outer  settlements,  they  were  still  more 
under  subjection  to  the  great  corporations  which 
monopolized  trade.  All  their  claims  and  holdings 
in  America  were  controlled  by  the  Dutch  West 
India  Company,  which  had  almost  unlimited  pow- 
ers of  government,  as  well  as  exclusive  commer- 


English  Leadings  133 

cial  rights;  and  the  colony,  in  turn,  was  ruled 
autocratically  by  governors  whom  the  company 
appointed  and  who  acted  under  orders  from  its 
directorate  at  Amsterdam.  This  autocracy  ex- 
plains the  readiness  with  which  the  Dutch  colonists 
soon  surrendered  to  the  more  liberal  domination 
of  the  English. 

When  France  and  England,  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  began  their  struggle  for  the  possession  of 
the  great  interior  valleys  of  North  America, 
active  enterprise  and  formal  procedure  had  given 
the  French  a  much  superior  position  on  the  conti- 
nent. They  had  explored  the  country,  overrun  it 
with  their  traders  and  missionaries,  opened  friend- 
ly relations  with  the  natives,  and  established  many 
well-planned  military  posts.  Logically  they  had 
much  the  better  claim  to  the  great  prize  of  do- 
minion for  which  the  two  nations  fought, — within 
the  disputed  ground,  the  whole  strength  of  position 
and  preparation  for  the  contest  was  on  their  side. 
But  they  were  very  far  from  France,  and  they 
had  to  fight,  not  only  a  far-away  England,  but  a 
transplanted  section  of  England,  entrenched  in  the 
long  line  of  colonies  on  the  ocean  coast,  and  as 
vigorous  and  self-inspired  as  England  herself. 
Their  own  New  France  was  but  a  name;  not  much 
of  France  had  been  brought  to  it,  except  the  com- 


134  English  Leadership 

missions  and  mandates  of  the  French  king  and 
court.  This,  principally,  was  the  cause  of  their 
defeat. 

In  the  meantime,  while  the  English  of  England, 
from  the  reign  of  the  first  Stuart  to  that  of  George 
V,  had  been  slowly  perfecting  their  monarchical 
constitution  of  representative  government,  the 
emigrant  English  in  American  settlements  had 
been  molding  the  same  elements, — of  tradition, 
common  law,  historical  habit,  and  the  free  spirit 
of  their  race, — from  the  same  primitive  Teutonic 
sources  into  other  constitutions  of  government  of 
a  purely  republican  form.  Making  new  homes 
for  themselves  and  a  new  structure  of  society  in 
a  strange  land,  as  their  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors  had 
done  twelve  centuries  before,  and  organizing  their 
communities  under  conditions  much  the  same,  the 
early  English  settlers  in  America  reverted  most 
naturally  to  the  same  type  of  structure,  wherever 
they  could  act  with  independence  and  spontaneity. 
To  the  colonists  of  New  England  as  to  no  other, 
fortune  had  given  such  independence,  and  the  new 
fabric  of  English  society  grew  there  as  it  had 
originally  in  Britain,  from  the  town  or  township 
as  its  political  base;  the  beginnings  of  govern- 
mental action  were  thus  put  at  the  very  doors 
of  the  people,   and  the  old  Anglo-Saxon   system 


English  Leadings  135 

of  political  education  by  local  training  in  self- 
government,  revived  and  modernized,  was  once 
more  set  to  work  in  a  new  land.  Forms  of  gov- 
ernment in  other  colonies  than  New  England  were 
dictated  by  royal  or  proprietary  authority;  they, 
consequently,  had  a  less  perfect  early  schooling  in 
popular  government;  but  the  teaching  reached 
them  all  In  the  end,  and  when  they  broke  their  colo- 
nial relation  to  the  mother  country,  assuming  polit- 
ical independence,  in  States  which  grouped  them  as 
they  had  been  colonially  grouped,  but  in  a  nation- 
alized federation  of  their  States,  they  offered,  to 
the  observation  of  the  world,  another  very  differ- 
ent and  very  striking  example  of  constitutional  and 
representative  government.  The  English  model 
was  now  republicanized  and  popularized  to  a  de- 
gree far  beyond  its  original;  far  beyond  any  trial 
of  representative  democracy  then  known  outside 
of  the  three  Forest  Cantons  of  the  Swiss. 

The  development  of  the  Idea  of  systematic 
constitution-making  had  been  strangely  tardy  and 
slow.  As  we  see  in  English  history,,  the  most  defi- 
nite constitution  of  government  that  existed  any- 
where, before  the  seventeenth  century,  was  but  a 
crude  accumulation  of  royal  concessions  and  par- 
liamentary and  judicial  precedents,  out  of  which 
certain   fundamental  principles   of  representative 


136  English  Leadership 

government  were  extracted  and  became  established 
in  the  English  practice  of  such  government;  but 
what  we  speak  of  as  the  English  or  British  consti- 
tution was  and  is  simply  a  legal  and  historical 
abstraction  of  the  mind.  Only  in  outline  have  its 
principles  ever  been  systematically  defined. 

Down  to  the  seventeenth  century  there  had  been 
no  conception  of  a  constitution  of  government  de- 
rived otherwise  than  by  grants  and  concessions 
from  some  royal  or  ducal  sovereignty  above  the 
governed  people.  The  first  communities  in  mod- 
ern times  to  constitute  a  system  of  government 
for  themselves  by  written  agreement  were  those 
of  the  English  colonists  in  America.  If  the  simple 
Mayflower  compact  of  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims 
could  be  called  a  political  constitution,  it  would 
be  the  first;  but  the  "Fundamental  Orders"  and 
"Fundamental  Agreement"  of  the  Connecticut 
settlers  are  nearer  to  the  idea.  In  England,  a 
few  years  later,  two  attempts  at  the  framing  of 
a  written  constitution  were  made,  under  the  Crom- 
wellian  Protectorate;  but  the  operation  of  each 
was  short-lived.  Then,  for  more  than  a  century, 
there  seems  to  have  been  no  more  writing  of  sys- 
tematic constitutions,  excepting  John  Locke's  for 
the  Carolinas  and  William  Penn's  for  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  excepting,  also,  the  important  additions 


English  Leadings  137 

made  to  the  old  English  constitutional  documents, 
in  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act  and  the  Bill  of  Rights. 

The  era  of  constitution-making  consequently 
cannot  be  said  to  have  opened  until  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  was  drawn  up  in  1776.  Between 
that  year  and  1783  each  one  of  the  thirteen  newly 
independent  United  States  discarded  its  former 
character  of  government  and  framed  a  constitution 
for  itself.  In  1787-88,  by  the  framing  and  adop- 
tion of  the  Federal  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  the  greatest  of  such  models  of  political  art 
was  exhibited  to  the  world.^ 

Here  in  this  republic  of  English  America,  for 
the  first  time  in  world  history,  the  adaptation  of 
popular  government  in  representative  form  to  a 
large  structure  of  federal  nationality  was  tried  and 
proved.  The  Greek  federations  had  been  unions 
of  represented  states,  not  of  represented  peoples; 
the  Swiss  confederation  was  yet  to  be  made  a 
really  nationahzing  union;  and  in  all  preceding 
instances  the  federal  structure  of  a  political  system 
had  been  attempted  in  but  small  ways.  Now,  the 
scale  was  large,  the  result  impressive  and  the  suc- 
cess in  many  aspects  complete.  This  constitution 
crowned  the  work  of  the  English  peoples  as  the 

*For  a  detailed  account  of  the  framing  of  the  Constitution, 
see  Max  Farrand,   The  Framing  of  the  Constitution. — Ed. 


138  English  Leadership 

political  teachers  and  leaders  of  the  world.  Let 
us  see,  then,  how  far  and  how  successfully  its 
lead  has  been  followed. 

Up  to  this  time  Europe  had  not  half  learned 
nor  half  understood  the  lessons  of  English  political 
teaching.  On  the  contrary  the  French  Revolution, 
partly  the  outgrowth  of  earlier  English  influence, 
had  discredited  all  democratic  doctrine,  though  the 
idea  of  systematic  constitution-making  had  fairly 
lodged  itself  In  the  European  mind,  and  could  not 
be  long  inactive.  With  the  exception  of  the  Span- 
ish American  countries  and  Sweden,  the  political 
constitutions  originating  throughout  western  Eu- 
rope In  the  half-century  after  the  rise  of  Napoleon, 
were  all  of  the  old  charter  type,  not  derived  from 
the  people,  but  granted  to  them  from  a  sovereignty 
above.  Still,  they  were  constitutions,  which  In 
many  cases  served  as  the  bases  for  their  liberalized 
constitutions  of  to-day.  When  at  last,  following 
the  revolutions  of  1848,  a  resolute  and  general 
demand  for  liberalized  and  constitutional  govern- 
ment was  made  throughout  Western  Europe,  suc- 
cess was  so  great  that  the  seeming  failure  of  the 
revolutions  promised  to  be  temporary.  For,  in 
1 86 1,  the  constitution  of  Sardinia  was  extended  to 
the  Kingdom  of  Italy;  in  1867,  the  dual  monarchy 
of  Austria-Hungary  was  created,  with  a  separate 


English  Leadings  139 

constitution  for  each  of  its  national  parts;  in  1871, 
the  German  Empire  was  organized  under  a  written 
constitution;  and  in  1875,  the  Third  French  Re- 
public was  established,  with  a  definite  constitution 
adopted  by  an  assembly  representative  of  the  na- 
tional will.  From  Europe  the  movement  spread 
eastward.  Even  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  was  forced 
to  capitulate,  and  conceded  to  his  subjects  in  1876 
a  short-lived  constitution,  which  was  revived  by 
the  Young  Turk  Revolution  in  1908.  Among 
Oriental  peoples  the  Japanese  were  the  first  to 
receive  a  written  constitution,  proclaimed  by  their 
ruler  in  1889.  The  Persians  were  likewise  favored 
by  their  Shah  in  1907,  and  have  confirmed  his 
action  by  the  revolution  of  1909.  ^ 

And  now  let  us  see  how  much  of  the  precise 
architecture  of  the  English  and  the  Anglo-Amer- 
ican constitution  of  popular  government  has  been 
adopted  by  these  nations,  whose  conceptions  of 
constitutional  and  representative  government  were 
all  derived  from  the  political  experience  of  the 
English  race. 

There  are  three  essential  features  of  the  system 
of  popular  government  developed  among  the  Eng- 

'  Since  this  essay  was  written,  China,  too,  has  joined  the 
ranks  of  constitutional  government  through  the  revolution  of 
1911-13. — Ed. 


140  English  Leadership 

llsh  peoples:  (i)  a  real  representation  of  the 
people  In  the  legislative  department  of  their  gov- 
ernment, secured  by  a  broadly  general  suffrage 
and  by  directness  in  the  election  of  representatives; 

(2)  control  of  public  revenue  and  expenditure  by 
the    representative    branch    of    the    legislatures; 

(3)  a  real  responsibility  of  the  executive  de- 
partment of  government  to  the  people,  secured 
either  indirectly  by  the  ministerial  agency  of  the 
British  system,  or  directly  by  election  to  the  execu- 
tive office,  as  in  the  United  States, 

Originally,  as  we  have  seen,  the  English  elective 
franchise  was  limited  strictly  to  the  owners  of 
property  in  land,  and  that  rule  prevailed  till  the 
last  century,  when  the  suffrage  was  extended  by 
successive  acts  to  tenants,  householders,  rate-pay- 
ers and  finally  to  lodgers,  coming  to  be  exercised 
at  present  in  Great  Britain  by  nearly  the  whole 
body  of  male  citizens,  as  well  as  by  women  for 
many  purposes  of  election,  though  not  for  parlia- 
mentary representation.  Still,  however,  the  con- 
ditioning or  qualifying  of  the  elective  franchise, 
by  some  required  ownership  of  property,  some  tax- 
paying,  or  some  hire  of  a  residence,  to  indicate  a 
substantial  footing  in  the  community,  even  if  slight, 
is  a  principle  maintained  in  the  United  Kingdom, 
and  in  many  of  the  colonies  of  the  British  Empire, 


English  Leadings  141 

[By  the  franchise  law  of  191 8  the  British  parlia- 
ment has  abolished  the  remaining  limitations  based 
on  property  and  on  sex,  and  thus  again  placed 
England  in  the  vanguard  of  democratic  liberal- 
ism.] 

The  same  principle  was  adhered  to  for  some 
time  in  the  thirteen  British  colonies  which  assumed 
independence  and  formed  the  republic  of  the 
United  States.  It  was  not  until  new  States  began 
to  arise  in  the  West  that  property  qualifications 
of  the  suffrage  were  first  dropped.  The  original 
States  then  followed  the  example  of  the  new  com- 
monwealths, some  quickly,  some  slowly,  until  adult 
male  citizens  of  the  United  States  (criminals, 
paupers,  the  insane  and  the  idiotic  excepted)  had 
received  generally  the  right  to  vote.  A  few  States 
require  ability  to  read  as  a  qualification,  a  few 
exact  the  payment  of  a  small  poll-tax,  and  a  few 
have  extended  the  right  to  women,  in  whole  or  in 
part.  [Since  19 12  those  few  have  been  joined  by 
several  others,  raising  the  total  number  of  full 
and  partial  suffrage  states  to  21.] 

Outside  of  the  political  communities  which  the 
English  peoples  have  formed,  representative  insti- 
tutions have  been  constructed  most  frequently  upon 
the  basis  maintained  in  Great  Britain,  namely  that 
of  a  more  or  less  limited  franchise.     Either  a 


142  English  Leadership 

property-owning  or  a  tax-paying  qualification  is 
prescribed  in  Prussia,  and  the  great  majority  of 
the  secondary  states  of  the  German  Empire;  in 
Spain,  Italy,  Holland,  Hungary,  Servia,  Roumania 
and  Japan.  But  in  Prussia  the  franchise  is  nar- 
rowed still  more  in  effect  by  a  classification  of  the 
tax-payers  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure  political 
ascendency  to  the  wealthy  class.  The  indirect 
mode  of  election  is  practiced  likewise,  to  some 
extent,  in  Italy,  Baden,  Bavaria,  and  some  other 
states.  Spain  has  made  provision  for  a  representa- 
tion of  minorities.  And  so  one  might  continue 
indefinitely  to  cite  examples  of  constitutional  gains 
in  the  franchise.  It  is  obvious  enough,  however, 
that  the  general  tendency  in  Europe,  on  the  whole, 
is  plainly  toward  universal  suffrage. 

But  in  every  instance  of  such  constitutional  gains, 
the  nations  have  been  largely  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  England  and  America.  [France,  it 
is  true,  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  was  the 
first  to  conceive  the  idea  of  universal  manhood 
suffrage.  But  it  was  the  English-speaking  peoples 
who  first  put  the  principle  into  practice  and  per- 
fected the  instruments  for  its  application.]  In 
nothing  else  have  the  lessons  of  English  example 
and  experience  impressed  the  world  so  forcibly 
and  so  effectually  as  in  teaching  that  the  people 


English  Leadings  143 

can  safeguard  their  liberties  only  by  securing  con- 
trol of  the  public  purse.  Generally,  in  the  modern 
constitutions,  this  has  been  provided  for  with 
especial  care. 

Responsibility  of  the  Executive  is  secured  ac- 
cording to  the  British  mode  in  all  the  British 
colonies  and  in  most  of  the  constitutional  govern- 
ments of  Europe.  That  is  to  say,  the  immediate 
administration  of  those  governments  is  entrusted 
to  a  cabinet  of  ministers  whose  tenure  of  office 
depends  upon  the  approval  of  their  measures  by 
the  representatives  of  the  people.  If  they  lose 
the  confidence  of  a  majority  in  the  popular  branch 
of  the  legislature,  as  shown  by  an  adverse  vote, 
they  must  either  resign  or  obtain  a  dissolution  of 
the  legislature,  thus  appealing  to  the  judgment  of 
the  people  in  a  fresh  election  of  representatives. 

Executive  responsibility  is  secured  in  the  United 
States  by  centering  it  in  an  elected  President,  to 
whom  all  executive  authority  is  given.  The  Amer- 
ican republics  in  general  have  adopted  this,  which 
seems  to  be  the  natural  republican  mode;  but  the 
French,  in  their  republic,  have  preferred  to  endow 
their  President  with  little  of  personal  responsi- 
bility, and  to  have  him  chosen  in  the  National 
Assembly,  instead  of  by  popular  election,  making 
his  functions  and  his  place  in  the  government  much 


144  English  Leadership 

like  those  of  the  EngHsh  king.  In  the  Swiss  Con- 
federation "supreme  direction  and  executive  au- 
thority" are  exercised  by  a  Federal  Council  of 
seven  members,  elected  once  in  three  years  by  the 
Federal  Assembly,  which  also  elects  one  from  the 
membership  of  the  Council  to  be  the  President  of 
the  Confederation.  But  this  produces  more  divi- 
sion and  more  indirectness  of  responsibility  than 
either  the  British  or  the  American  scheme. 

Many,  also,  of  the  monarchical  constitutions  of 
Europe  contain  formal  declarations  that  the  King's 
"ministers  are  responsible,"  which  means,  simply, 
that  they  are  not  sheltered  by  the  irresponsible 
authority  of  the  sovereigns  but  are  subject  to  im- 
peachment and  trial  for  wrongful  acts.  This, 
however,  does  not  touch  the  real  executive  power 
with  which  the  King,  who  appoints  and  dismisses 
ministers,  is  clothed,  and  is  therefore  something 
very  different  from  the  responsibility  of  an  English 
minister  or  an  elected  President  of  the  United 
States. 

From  this  review  we  learn  that  one  or  the  other 
of  the  two  types  of  representative  popular  govern- 
ment developed  by  the  English  peoples,  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  respectively,  have 
been  copied  approximately,  if  not  exactly,  in  large 
parts  of  the  civilized  world.   In  the  old  monarchies 


English  Leadings  145 

there  is  still  much  resistance  to  the  concession  of 
a  really  responsible  executive;  but  all  kings  and 
princes  will  have  to  yield  it  in  the  end,  as  the 
English  kings  have  done,  and  content  themselves 
with  ceremonial  functions,  or  else  make  way 
for  elected  chiefs  of  state,  as  America  has  done. 
Nothing  in  prospective  history  is  more  plainly  cer- 
tain than  the  final  constitution  of  all  civilized  gov- 
ernments, in  essential  features,  on  English  lines. 

[In  our  survey  of  English  leadings,  thus  far,  we 
have  considered  only  one  field  of  political  experi- 
ence,— the  internal  constitution  of  government; 
and  in  this  unquestionably  the  experience  of  the 
English  peoples  has  been  the  forcing-house  in 
which  practically  all  the  great  principles  of  democ- 
racy and  republicanism  have  been  generated  and 
nourished,  and  from  which  they  have  later  been 
transplanted  to  nearly  every  nation  of  the  civilized 
world.  There  remains  one  other  field  of  political 
experience, — ^the  imperial;  and  in  this,  too,  English 
experience  has  generated  still  other  great  principles 
of  government, — principles  which  will  go  far 
toward  solving  the  perplexing  problems  of  inter- 
national association  and  interdependence  which  the 
world  is  now  facing.] 

In  colonial  expansion,  as  in  discovery,  explora- 
tion and  settlement,   it  was  not  promptitude  of 


146  English  Leadership 

enterprise  that  seated  English  folk  so  imperially. 
Neither  in  America  nor  in  any  other  of  their  far- 
flung  dominions  were  they  the  first  to  grasp  op- 
portunities of  trade  or  empire,  or  dominating  ad- 
vantage of  any  sort  in  the  world.  Always 
deliberate,  always  slow,  always  behind  some  race 
of  more  alertness,  they  have  been  late-comers  in 
every  field  of  foreign  enterprise,  commercial  or 
political;  but  once  arrived,  and  their  places  se- 
cured, they,  more  than  any  other  people,  have 
been  able  to  make  effective  use  of  it.  And  they 
have  always  had  a  strange  help  of  fortune  in  find- 
ing some  vantage-ground  awaiting  them  in  the 
field.  It  is  by  the  force  of  that  remarkable  com- 
bination,— of  favoring  circumstances  with  rare 
capability  and  rare  training  for  the  best  use  of 
it, — that  English  folk,  instead  of  Spanish  or  Portu- 
guese or  Dutch  or  French,  are  in  possession  of 
the  North  American  continent,  are  dominant  in 
Australasia,  are  masters  of  the  best  parts  of 
Africa,  rulers  of  India,  administrators  of  Egypt, — 
the  only  people  who  exercise  what  can  truly  be 
called  a  world-power. 

Apart  from  America,  it  was  in  India  that  Eng- 
lish colonial  claims  first  came  into  conflict  with 
those  of  other  nations.  For  there  the  French  too 
had  entered  as  traders,  organized  in  similar  com- 


English  Leadings  147 

panics,  but  acting  in  that  Incorporated,  private 
capacity,  under  authorizations  from  their  govern- 
ment which  Involved  some  ultimate  support.  The 
English  East  India  Company  and  its  agents  in 
India  could  act  with  greater  freedom,  however, 
than  was  permitted  to  the  French,  and  could  or- 
ganize action  more  efficiently  by  their  own  initia- 
tive and  within  themselves.  This  resulted  neces- 
sarily from  the  less  prescriptive  and  dictatorial 
spirit  of  English  government,  and  from  the  more 
independent  action  in  which  the  Englishmen  had 
been  trained. 

In  India,  as  in  America,  the  French,  at  the  out- 
set of  their  rivalry  with  the  English,  were  much  the 
more  alert  in  securing  advantages  of  position  and 
of  circumstance.  They  were  the  first  to  take  sides 
in  the  native  wars,  making  themselves  important 
as  allies,  and  winning  prestige  and  Influence  in 
southern  India,  while  the  English,  by  comparison, 
were  considerably  despised.  "England,"  says  one 
of  her  own  historians  of  British  India,  "owes  the 
idea  of  an  Indian  empire  to  the  French,"  who 
likewise  showed  her  how  It  could  be  won.  But 
when  the  English  of  the  East  India  Company  took 
the  idea,  and  saw  that  they  must  do  as  the  French 
were  doing,  or  lose  all  that  they  had  come  to 
India  for,  they  soon  outdid  their  teachers  in  the 


148  English  Leadership 

application  of  the  arts  and  energy  by  which  native 
rulers  were  superseded,  or  made  subservient  to 
European  control. 

The  Anglo-French  conflict  of  colonial  ambitions 
came  practically  to  an  end  in  both  India  and  Amer- 
ica, in  1760,  the  year  of  the  accession  of  George 
III  to  the  English  throne.  England  was  then  at 
the  height  of  her  supremacy  among  the  European 
nations,  and  fully  entered  on  her  imperial  career. 
Between  1764  and  1779,  with  what  seemed  to  be 
a  new  conception  of  her  destiny,  she  commissioned 
a  series  of  official  expeditions  to  explore  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  resulting  in  a  vast  enlargement  of  her  terri- 
torial claims  in  that  part  of  the  world.  The 
greatest  harvest  of  territory  was  gathered  by  Cap- 
tain Cook,  whose  official  instructions  were  to  take 
possession,  "with  the  consent  of  the  natives,  in 
the  name  of  the  king  of  Great  Britain,  of  con- 
venient situations  in  such  countries  as  you  may 
discover  that  have  not  been  discovered  or  visited 
by  any  other  European  power."  It  was  Cook's 
exploration  that  enabled  the  English  to  establish 
permanent  claim  to  Australia,  and  later  to  New 
Zealand.  It  was  his  explorations,  more  than  any 
other,  which  led  the  way  for  that  wider  establish- 
ment of  English  dominion  which  has  taken  place 
during  the  past  two  centuries. 


English  Leadings  149 

In  the  exercise  of  their  sovereignty  over  these 
wide  dominions,  it  may  be  said  with  fairness  that, 
on  the  whole  and  in  the  long  run,  the  English, 
more  often  than  otherwise,  have  been  leaders  in 
the  modern  culture  of  those  altruistic  feelings 
which  check  oppressive  uses  of  power.  The  Euro- 
pean enterprises  of  territorial  acquisition  and  of 
colonization  that  were  set  on  foot  in  the  sixteenth 
century  by  the  discovery  of  the  western  hemi- 
sphere, were  all  purely  commercial  in  motive,  and 
were  ruled  for  about  three  centuries  by  narrow, 
unenlightened  commercial  ideas.  These  were  ideas 
which  tended,  as  Professor  Seeley  has  shown  in 
his  lectures  on  "The  Expansion  of  England,"  to 
put  both  colonies  and  conquered  dependencies  on 
the  footing  of  so  much  national  property,  to  be 
worked  as  estates  for  the  pecuniary  profit  of  the 
proprietary  nation.  Tracing  the  extension  of  that 
theory  from  captured  possessions  to  colonies,  he 
writes:  "In  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  no 
scruple  in  applying  it  to  conquered  dependencies, 
and,  since  the  colonies  of  Spain  were  in  a  certain 
sense  conquered  dependencies,  we  can  understand 
that  unconsciously,  unintentionally,  the  barbaric 
principle  crept  into  her  colonial  system,  and  that  it 
lurked  there  and  poisoned  it  in  later  times.  We 
can  understand,  too,  how  the  example  of  Spain 


150  English  Leadership 

and  the  precedents  set  by  her  influenced  the  other 
European  states,  Holland,  France  and  England, 
which  entered  upon  the  career  of  colonization  a 
century  later.  In  the  case  of  some  of  these  states, 
for  example,  France,  the  result  of  this  theory  was 
that  the  mother  country  exercised  an  iron  authority 
over  her  colonies."  ^ 

Politically  the  barbaric  Spanish  theory  could  not 
be  put  into  practice  in  English  colonies,  because 
of  the  more  liberal  political  institutions  under 
which  English  colonists  had  been  bred,  and  be- 
cause of  its  repugnance  to  all  English  experience 
and  thought;  but  it  could  be  applied  commercially, 
and  it  was.  Hence  the  old  colonial  system  of 
England, — the  system  that  was  broken  down  by 
the  revolt  of  her  American  colonies, — "gave  un- 
bounded liberty  except  in  one  department,  namely 
trade,  and  in  that  department  it  interfered  to  fine 
the  colonists  for  the  benefit  of  the  home  traders." 
"Thus,"  says  Seeley,  "this  old  system  was  an  ir- 
rational jumble  of  two  opposite  conceptions.  It 
claimed  to  rule  the  colonists  because  they  were 
Englishmen  and  brothers,  and  yet  it  ruled  them 
as  if  they  were  conquered  Indians.  And,  again, 
while  it  treated  them  as  conquered  people,  it  gave 

*  Quoted  from  J.  R.  Seeley,   The  Expansion  of  England,  pp. 
78-79.— Ed. 


English  Leadings  151 

them  so  much  liberty  that  they  could  easily  rebel."  * 
When  the  old  system  had  been  wrecked  by  the 
discordancy  of  its  commercial  with  its  political 
principles,  and  England  constructed  her  colonial 
policy  anew,  she  honestly  yielded  her  mind  to  the 
conviction  that  freedom  is  a  universal  good, — the 
condition  of  all  prosperity, — and  that  the  more 
perfectly  the  terms  of  freedom  could  be  brought 
into  her  relations  with  her  colonies,  the  more 
beneficial  in  all  ways  those  relations  would  be- 
come, equally  to  herself  and  to  them.  So  the 
theory  of  colonial  expansion  was  civilized  in  her 
hands,  during  the  last  century,  and  she  introduced 
new  precedents  and  examples  to  supersede  those 
of  Spain.  [There  is,  however,  according  to  Pol- 
lard, still  a  "distinction  between  colonies  used  for 
exploitation  and  colonies  used  for  settlement" 
which  "has  led  to  important  constitutional  varia- 
tions in  the  empire.  Only  those  colonies  in  which 
large  white  communities  are  settled  have  received 
self-government;  those  in  which  a  few  whites 
exploit  a  large  colored  population  remain  subject 
to  the  control  of  the  home  government."  ^] 
Even  a  hundred  years  ago  the  temper  of  men 

*  Quoted  from  J.  R.  Seeley,   The  Expansion  of  England,  pp. 
80-81.— Ed. 
*See  A.  F.  Pollard,  History  of  England,  p.   152.— Ed. 


152  English  Leadership 

was  harder  than  It  is  now,  and  the  breach  of 
sympathy  between  higher  and  lower  races  in  the 
scales  of  culture  and  capacity  was  far  more  difficult 
to  overcome.  In  the  whole  movement  which  has 
covered  the  later-found  parts  of  the  world  with 
European  masters,  selfish  motives  have  remained, 
no  doubt,  just  the  same  in  force  and  in  quality 
from  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when 
the  Spaniards  took,  possession  of  Mexico  and  Peru, 
down  to  the  last  years  of  the  nineteenth,  when 
Africa  was  divided  up  and  the  Americans  laid 
their  hands  on  the  Philippine  Islands;  but  the 
temper  in  them  has  been  greatly  softened.  It  has 
been  softened,  too,  in  some  of  the  dominating 
races  more  than  in  others,  and  most  of  all,  seem- 
ingly, in  the  peoples  of  English  stock. 

Down  to  the  last  century,  however,  the  English 
had  quite  as  much  heartlessness  to  answer  for  in 
their  treatment  of  some,  at  least,  among  their 
alien  subjects,  as  can  be  charged  to  the  account 
of  any  other  western  European  race.  True,  there 
have  been  instances,  in  earlier  English  rule,  of  a 
sordid,  callous  selfishness  and  a  cold  religious 
bigotry  that  are  almost  without  a  parallel;  but  so, 
too,  without  a  parallel,  have  been  the  later  penitent 
efforts  toward  reparation.  That  India  had  small 
experience  of  anything  but  rapacity  in  its  govern- 


English  Leadings  153 

ment,  during  a  long  period  of  its  subjection  to  an 
English  mercantile  corporation,  is  beyond  dispute ; 
though  recent  historical  studies  have  taken  some- 
thing from  the  blackness  of  the  pictures  that  were 
drawn  by  Burke.  [It  is  of  Interest  here  to  note 
the  modern  tendency  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 
the  maladministration  of  India  took  place  only 
during  the  unrestricted  rule  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, and  that,  with  the  growth  of  the  influence 
of  the  home  government,  the  management  of 
affairs  became  more  ethical,  and  material  con- 
ditions began  to  improve.  On  the  other  hand, 
as  Earned  says,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the 
administration  of  India  under  the  company  was 
altogether  reprehensible.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  actions  of  men  like  Warren  Hastings  were 
prompted  almost  entirely  by  a  desire  to  preserve 
India  for  England;  and  that  the  misdeeds  of  their 
terms  of  office  caused  men  to  forget  many  of  their 
beneficial  public  measures.  ^  ]  But  the  later  British' 
rule  has  been,  certainly,  as  irreproachable  as  any 
government  by  right  of  conquest,  without  consent 
of  the  governed,  can  be.     [Seeley's  comment  on 

^  For  further  discussion  on  this  side  of  the  question,  see  the 
article  on  Warren  Hastings,  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica, 
nth  edition;  Stephen,  Story  of  Nuncomar;  Strachey,  Hastings 
and  the  Rohilla  War;  and  Cross,  A  History  of  England  and 
Greater  Britain. — Ed. 


154  English  Leadership 

this  subject  Is  pertinent.  He  claims  that  England 
did  not  conquer  India  in  the  generally  accepted 
sense,  and  then  goes  on  to  say:  "And  thus  the 
mystic  halo  of  marvel  and  miracle  which  has 
gathered  around  this  Empire  disappears  before  a 
fixed  scrutiny.  ^  It  disappears  when  we  perceiye 
that,  though  we  are  foreign  rulers  in  India,  we 
are  not  conquerors  resting  on  superior  force,  when 
we  recognize  that  it  Is  a  mere  European  prejudice 
to  assume  that  since  we  do  not  rule  by  the  will  of 
the  people  of  India,  we  must  needs  rule  against 
their  will."]  Much  that  the  British  have  done 
has  been  from  pure  intentions  of  good  to  the 
country  and  the  people.  Even  though  there  has 
always  been  an  unconfessed  check  on  such  Inten- 
tions, proceeding  from  the  demand  of  British  in- 
dustries and  trade  to  have  their  interests  consid- 
ered before  all  else,  even  though  this  has  dis- 
couraged the  economic  development  of  India  in 
Industries  that  would  lessen  the  market  for  British 
goods,  nevertheless.  In  nearly  all  conditions  of 
peace,  order,  and  even-handed  justice  between  in- 
dividuals,— in  organized  systems  of  education  and 
benevolence,  and  In  public  agencies  of  every  de- 
scription, for  trade,  travel,  and  communication, — 
the  country  and  its  people  have  been  immeasurably 

*  See  J.  R.   Seeley,  Expansion  of  England,  p.  264. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  155 

benefited  In  recent  times  by  their  British  masters. 
Possibly  the  taint  of  self-profiting  and  self-aggran- 
dizement may  be  removed  in  time,  by  the  moral 
processes  that  have  diminished  It  so  much  as  they 
have.  [A  step  toward  the  democratic  government 
of  India  is  indicated  by  an  article  In  the  American 
Review  of  Reviews  of  August,  19 18.  The  article 
says,  in  part:  "It  would  be  far  from  true  to 
assert  that  England  looks  forward  to  a  future  of 
selfish  exploitations  In  the  great  Asiatic  empire 
over  which  the  British  crown  holds  sway.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Montagu,  Secretary  for  India  in  the  Lloyd 
George  ministry,  has  recently  spent  six  months  in 
India,  studying  all  the  problems  of  that  vast  coun- 
try. He  has  returned  to  London  with  a  report 
which  proposes  the  beginnings  of  a  very  consider- 
able system  of  native  home  rule.  It  Is  not  expected 
to  go  as  fast  In  India  as  we  Americans  have  gone 
in  the  Philippines,  but  the  plans  proposed  consti- 
tute a  good  beginning,  and  India  can  go  forward 
towards  full  self-government  on  the  Canadian  plan 
by  the  simple  process  of  making  wide  use  of  the 
initial  powers  conferred  upon  her."] 

[Hopes  for  the  realization  of  this  Ideal  are 
justified  by  England's  treatment  of  her  depend- 
encies in  another  quarter  of  the  world.  When 
the  South  African  problem  arose  through  the  out- 


156  English  Leadership 

break  of  the  Boer  War,  the  fundamental  issue  was 
not  one  of  financial  gain,  but  rather  of  racial  equal- 
ity against  racial  ascendency.  In  such  an  issue 
Britain's  traditions  made  inevitable  her  alignment 
on  the  side  of  racial  equality.  But  that  Britain's 
great  self-governing  colonies  should  take  a  volun- 
tary part  in  helping  her  to  establish  this  ideal,  is 
indication  of  the  fact  that  there  was  developing 
in  the  British  Empire  a  unity  of  sentiment  and  of 
aim  which  had  never  before  been  realized. 

In  this  concerted  action  of  England  and  her 
colonies  in  the  Boer  war,  the  growth  of  the  idea 
of  imperial  federation  is  discernible.  The  Im- 
perial Federation  Society  had  been  founded  in 
1878;  but  it  was  not  until  the  Boer  war  that  the 
colonies,  which  had  once  been  regarded  as  "mill- 
stones around  England's  neck"  came  to  be  recog- 
nized as  having  a  vital  part  in  the  British  imperial 
organism.  In  the  two  Jubilee  celebrations  of  1887 
and  1897,  there  may  have  been  "a  suggestion  of 
blatancy  and  of  mere  pride  in  dominion."  But 
the  events  which  followed  the  Boer  war  have 
proved  that  this  was  only  a  temporary  manifesta- 
tion quite  out  of  accord  with  the  deeper  and  more 
permanent  conception  of  imperial  responsibility. 
No  surer  proof  can  be  found  of  this  new  attitude 
than    the    note    of    profound    sincerity    which    is 


English  Leadings  157 

sounded  again  and  again  through  all  of  Kipling's 
poetry,  and  the  acclaim  with  which  that  poetry 
was  received  among  all  English-speaking  peoples 
was  indication  of  their  growing  realization  of  that 
responsibility. 

This  eminently  English  conception  of  empire 
is  embodied  in  the  common  councils  between  Eng- 
lish statesmen  and  colonial  prime  ministers,  in 
which  the  great  problems  of  imperial  policy  and 
administration  are  discussed  with  new  frankness 
and  a  new  spirit  of  cooperation.  Coincident  with 
this  tendency  toward  a  greater  unity  on  the  part 
of  the  members  of  the  British  Empire  has  been 
the  development  of  a  more  marked  national  spirit 
among  the  peoples  of  the  self-governing  colonies, 
a  development  which  does  not,  however,  as  many 
may  have  feared,  endanger  the  growth  of  imperial 
unity.  On  the  contrary,  the  sense  of  nationality 
is  an  essential  element  in  the  fullest  achievement 
of  empire.  It  is  only  when  each  individual  organ 
performs  its  own  particular  function  that  there 
can  be  attained  the  highest  efficiency  in  concerted 
action  toward  common  ends.  As  Ramsay  Muir 
has  so  well  said,  "The  essence  of  the  British  sys- 
tem is  the  free  development  of  natural  tendencies, 
and  the  encouragement  of  variety  of  types;  and 
the  future  towards  which  the  Empire  seems  to  be 


158  English  Leadership 

tending  is  not  that  of  a  highly  centralised  and 
unified  state,  but  that  of  a  brotherhood  of  free 
nations,  united  by  community  of  ideas  and  institu- 
tions, cooperating  for  many  common  ends,  and 
above  all  for  the  common  defense  in  case  of  need, 
but  each  freely  following  the  natural  trend  of  its 
own  development."  ^] 

If  there  is  anywhere  a  promise  of  realization 
of  such  an  empire  it  is  in  the  governments  that 
are  conducted  by  the  English  and  their  kin;  for 
whatever  may  have  been  the  former  fact,  they 
hold  the  lead  now  on  all  lines  of  progress  that 
tend  away  from  oppression,  toward  freedom  and 
toward  that  just  law  which  is  its  surest  guarantee. 
No  claim  of  the  English  people  is  less  disputable 
than  that  they,  more  than  others,  yield  an  un- 
reserved allegiance  to  law.  Law,  in  itself,  as  the 
interdiction  of  license  and  disorder,  apart  from  all 
its  sanctions  and  all  the  forces  of  authority  behind 
it,  commands  them  more  generally  than  it  com- 
mands other  peoples.  Some  influence  in  their  past 
has  planted  and  cultivated  in  their  minds  the  lofti- 
est conception,  yet  attained  among  men,  of  the 
social  purpose  for  which  human  ordinances  of 
government  are  framed.     When  Hooker  said  of 

*  Quoted  from  Ramsay  Muir,   The  Expansion  of  Europe,  p. 
189.— Ed. 


English  Leadings  159 

Law  that  "her  seat  Is  the  bosom  of  God,  her  voice 
the  harmony  of  the  world,"  he  did  not  exaggerate 
the  impassioned  reverence  of  enlightened  feeling 
which  he  expressed  for  his  fellow-countrymen. 
English  literature,  unlike  any  other,  contains  many 
similar  exaltations  of  the  thought  and  spirit  of 
Law. 

As  we  traced  the  main  incidents  of  the  long, 
slow  evolution  of  democratic  institutions  of  gov- 
ernment In  England,  we  could  see  how  often  and 
how  much  It  depended  on  reaffirmation  and  vindi- 
cations of  law,  with  some  broadening  and  exten- 
sion, always,  of  Its  previous  scope, — some  deepen- 
ing of  its  effect  on  personal  securities  and  rights. 
The  Norman  conqueror  found  It  prudent  to  base 
the  government  of  his  new  subjects,  with  no  greatly 
disturbing  change,  on  their  old  cherished  law.  His 
son,  Henry  I,  won  their  loyalty  to  himself  by  a 
charter  which  confirmed  the  laws  of  Edward  the 
Confessor;  this.  In  turn,  became  the  basis  of  the 
Great  Charter,  In  which  a  definitely  constitutional 
structure  of  law  began  to  take  form.  Confirma- 
tion after  confirmation  of  Magna  Carta  established 
the  foundation  for  the  grand  edifice  which  suc- 
cessive generations  of  Englishmen,  working  some- 
times by  shrewd  uses  of  opportunity,  and  some- 
times by  bold  strokes  of  revolution,  have  been  able 


i6o  English  Leadership 

to  erect.  It  seems  plain,  then,  that  the  evolution 
of  the  English  system  of  free  government  in- 
volved a  training  of  the  people  to  be  vigilant 
wardens  of  the  law,  with  an  enlightened  apprecia- 
tion of  its  import,  such  as  no  other  people  have 
received. 

["This  amazing  political  structure,  ^  which  re- 
fuses to  fall  within  any  of  the  categories  of  political 
science,  which  is  an  empire  and  yet  not  an  empire, 
a  state  and  yet  not  a  state,  a  supernation  incor- 
porating in  itself  an  incredible  variety  of  peoples 
and  races,  is  not  a  structure  which  has  been  de- 
signed by  the  ingenuity  of  man,  or  created  by  the 
purposive  action  of  a  government;  it  is  a  natural 
growth,  the  product  of  the  spontaneous  activity 
of  innumerable  individuals  and  groups  springing 
from  among  peoples  whose  history  has  made  lib- 
erty and  the  tolerance  of  differences  their  most 
fundamental  instincts;  it  is  the  product  of  a  series 
of  accidents,  unforeseen,  but  turned  to  advantage 
by  the  unfailing  and  ever-new  resourcefulness  of 
men  habituated  to  self-government.  .  .  .  Almost 
every  form  of  social  organization  and  of  govern- 
ment known  to  man  is  represented  in  its  complex 
and  many-hued  fabric.     It  embodies  five  of  the 

'  Quoted  from  Ramsay  Muir,   The  Expansion  of  Europe,  p. 
232-234. — Ed. 


English  Leadings  i6i 

most  completely  self-governing  communities  which 
the  world  has  known,  and  four  of  these  control 
the  future  of  the  great  empty  spaces  that  remain 
for  the  settlement  of  white  men.  It  finds  place 
for  the  highly  organized  caste  system  by  which 
the  teeming  millions  of  India  are  held  together.  It 
preserves  the  simple  tribal  organization  of  the 
African  clans.  To  different  elements  among  its 
subjects  this  empire  appears  in  different  aspects. 
To  the  self-governing  Dominions  it  is  a  brother- 
hood of  free  nations,  cooperating  for  the  defense 
and  diffusion  of  common  ideas  and  of  common 
institutions.  To  the  ancient  civilization  of  India 
or  of  Egypt  it  is  a  power  which,  in  spite  of  all 
its  mistakes  and  limitations,  has  brought  peace 
instead  of  turmoil,  law  instead  of  arbitrary  might, 
unity  instead  of  chaos,  justice  instead  of  oppres- 
sion, freedom  for  the  development  of  the  capac- 
ities and  characteristic  ideas  of  their  peoples,  and 
the  prospect  of  a  steady  growth  of  national  unity 
and  political  responsibility.  To  the  backward  races 
it  has  meant  the  suppression  of  unending  slaughter, 
the  disappearance  of  slavery,  the  protection  of  the 
rights  and  usages  of  primitive  and  simple  folk 
against  reckless  exploitation,  and  the  chance  of 
gradual  improvement  and  emancipation  from  bar- 
barism.    But  to  all  alike,  to  one  quarter  of  the 


i62  English  Leadership 

inhabitants  of  the  world,  it  has  meant  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Reign  of  Law,  and  of  the  Liberty 
which  can  only  exist  under  its  shelter.  In  some 
degree,  though  imperfectly  as  yet,  it  has  realized 
within  its  own  body  all  the  three  great  political 
ideas  of  the  modern  world.  It  has  fostered  the 
rise  of  a  sense  of  nationhood  in  the  young  com- 
munities of  the  new  lands,  and  in  the  old  and  de- 
caying civilizations  of  the  most  ancient  historic 
countries.  It  has  given  a  freedom  of  development 
to  self-government  such  as  history  has  never  be- 
fore known.  And  by  linking  together  so  many 
diverse  and  contrasted  peoples  in  a  common  peace, 
it  has  already  realized,  for  a  quarter  of  the  globe, 
the  ideal  of  internationalism  on  a  scale  undreamt 
of  by  the  most  sanguine  prophets  of  Europe."] 


THE  GEOGRAPHIC  FACTOR  IN 
ENGLISH  HISTORY 


Donald  E.  Smith 


THE  GEOGRAPHIC  FACTOR  IN 
ENGLISH  HISTORY 

The  Serbians  have  a  motto:  "One  travels  the 
world  over,  to  return  to  Serbia,"  which  applies, 
obviously,  as  most  nationalistic  mottoes  do,  in  the 
case  of  every  country  on  the  face  of  the  globe. 
The  English  version  of  it,  though  not  crystallized 
into  epigram,  is  none  the  less  deeply  felt  by  Eng- 
lishmen of  all  time,  with  what  justification  the 
traveler  in  Great  Britain  can  easily  recognize. 
Viewed  externally,  England  has  a  simple,  well-bred 
beauty,  never  flagrant  nor  extravagant,  yet  rich 
and  colorful,  revealing  on  all  sides  the  touch  of 
an  art  that  does  not  distort  nature.  The  rural 
districts  suggest  a  vast  park,  with  their  hedgerows, 
their  fresh  woods  and  gardens,  their  abundant  sun- 
shine and  innumerable  narrow  streams  whose 
placid  surfaces  little  betray  the  depth  of  the  waters 
beneath.  The  rough  but  low-lying  mountains  of 
Wales,  northern  England  and  Scotland  supply  the 
bold  note  in  the  landscape  of  Great  Britain,  wild 

165 


i66  English  Leadership 

yet  nowhere  savage,  strong  yet  nowhere  gigantic 
or  Alpine. 

To  get  back  to  less  striking  details  of  geography, 
— the  island  of  Britain  is  separated  from  the 
northwestern  coast  of  Europe  by  narrow  seas 
which  have  served  sometimes  as  a  barrier,  at  other 
times  as  a  link,  between  the  Continent  and  Eng- 
land. The  subsidence  of  her  coast  ages  ago  has 
made  its  outline  very  irregular,  and  converted  the 
mouths  of  the  rivers  into  estuaries  of  great  value 
as  harbors.  The  eastern  shore,  the  edge  of  a 
plain,  lies  low  and  flat;  the  other  shores  are  high, 
steep  banks,  difficult  of  access,  except  at  the  deep 
indentations  of  the  rivers.  Rising  ghost-like  out 
of  the  sea,  the  chalk  cliffs  of  the  southern  coast  of 
England  give  no  suggestion  of  the  character  of 
the  land  that  lies  beyond  their  pale  edge.  In  the 
olden  time,  that  beyond  was  a  mass  of  virgin  for- 
est, dark,  forbidding,  and  as  uninhabitable  as  the 
vast  fens  that  stretched  for  miles  around  at  the 
mouths  of  the  rivers,  interspersed  with  a  few  open- 
ings that  permitted  cultivation.  The  progress  of 
settlement  in  time  has  cleared  the  forest  land  and 
reclaimed  the  swamps,  till  England  stands  to-day 
revealed  as  a  country  of  rolling  hills,  smooth 
plains,  and  low  mountains,  a  country  level  and 
green,  immensely  varied  in  activity  and  resources. 


The  Geographic  Factor        167 

The  well-watered  downs  and  valleys  of  south- 
eastern England,  favored  by  an  equable  climate, 
are  utilized  both  for  sheep-pastures  and  for  agri- 
culture. Beyond  these  lies  the  midland  region,  or 
the  great  Central  plain,  as  it  is  more  often  called. 
This,  next  to  London,  is  the  center  of  English 
wealth,  population  and  industry,  the  scene  of  a 
wide  variety  of  human  activity, — mining,  manu- 
facturing, dairying,  grazing, — all  knit  together  in 
a  network  of  railroads,  rivers  and  canals,  and 
opened  to  the  outside  world  through  its  two  great 
seaports,  London  to  the  southeast  on  the  estuary 
of  the  Thames,  Liverpool  to  the  northwest  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Mersey. 

Back  of  this  great  Central  plain  rises  the  ir- 
regular mass  of  hill  and  mountain  which  forms  the 
western  rim  of  Britain,  an  almost  continuous  wall 
from  Land's  End  to  the  Hebrides, — nowhere  vast 
and  massive,  everywhere  rough  and  difficult  of  ac- 
cess except  through  its  three  natural  gateways, 
Bristol  Channel,  the  Mersey,  and  Solway  Firth. 
The  extreme  southwestern  section,  cut  off  by  Bris- 
tol, springs  precipitously  from  the  stormy  Atlantic, 
the  far-jutting,  rockbound  promontory  of  Corn- 
wall, whose  rich  mines  of  tin  and  copper  first  at- 
tracted to  Britain  the  trading  ships  of  ancient 
Phoenicia.   Between  Bristol  Channel  and  the  Mer- 


i68  English  Leadership 

sey  lie  the  low,  rugged  peaks  and  ridges  of  Wales, 
often  veiled  in  mists  from  the  moisture-laden  winds 
of  the  west,  a  land  of  many  flocks  and  numerous 
small  villages,  but  richly  endowed  with  a  variety 
of  mineral  resources.  To  the  north  of  the  Mersey, 
the  western  wall  rises  again  in  the  long,  straggling 
ridges  of  the  Pennines,  behind  which  lies  hidden 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  spots  in  all  Britain, — 
the  wooded  and  picturesque  mountains  of  Cumber- 
land, silent,  secluded,  mirrored  in  numerous  lakes, 
— the  only  region  in  England  which  has  escaped 
the  transforming  hand  of  man.  This,  the  cele- 
brated Lake  District,  so  securely  cut  off  from  the 
rest  of  Britain,  seemed  destined  by  nature  to  be 
the  home  of  English  romantic  poetry.  Still  farther 
to  the  north  the  mountain  rim,  broken  by  Solway 
Firth  and  the  Firth  of  Clyde,  rises  abruptly  to 
the  Scottish  Highlands,  covering  the  whole  north- 
ern end  of  the  island, — a  massive  wall  of  peaks 
and  crags  deeply  trenched  by  glen  and  fiord, — 
Britain's  bulwark  against  the  winds  and  waves  of 
Northern  seas. 

Back  of  the  larger  island  of  Britain,  and  cut 
off  from  easy  communication  with  Europe,  lies 
Ireland, — brilliantly  green  and  attractive,  but 
lonely  and  poor  in  natural  resources, — encircled 
by  its  rim  of  low-lying  mountains,  beaten  by  cold, 


The  Geographic  Factor        169 

angry  seas,  and  drenched  by  continuous  rains  which 
render  the  greater  part  of  its  flat  central  plain  an 
untillable  bog,  barrier  alike  to  internal  communi- 
cation and  to  the  agriculture  and  industry  from 
which  alone  the  necessities  of  life  might  be  secured. 
Small  wonder  that  the  Irish  are  an  emigrating 
people ! 

These  two  large  islands,  with  a  number  of  small 
and  dependent  ones,  constituting  the  British  Isles, 
may  be  regarded  as  the  predestined  home  of  a 
great  people.  Surely,  few  regions  of  the  earth's 
surface,  of  equal  area,  are  so  favored  by  natural 
conditions  for  the  home  of  so  vigorous  and  pro- 
gressive a  nation.  Lacking  though  they  may  be  in 
the  bland  climate  and  the  sheer  physical  beauty 
of  the  most  favored  Mediterranean  lands,  the  gen- 
eral aspect  of  nature  is  here  altogether  conducive 
to  the  highest  human  development.  While  it  is 
true  that  the  great  scientific  observer,  Humboldt, 
regarded  France  as  the  most  highly  endowed  of  all 
European  lands,  from  a  point  of  view  of  natural 
advantages,  we  must  dissent  from  his  too  sweeping 
generalization.  Probably  no  portion  of  the  earth's 
surface  of  equal  area  possesses  such  a  profusion 
and  variety  of  sources  of  wealth.  Greater  fertility 
of  soil  and  greater  facilities  of  purely  agricultural 
wealth  can  be  found  in  many  historic  river  valleys 


170  English  Leadership 

such  as  the  Nile,  the  Tigris-Euphrates  and  the 
Mississippi ;  and  yet  the  English  have  been  the 
teachers  of  the  modern  world  in  scientific  agricul- 
ture. Certain  arid  mountain  regions  in  Chile, 
Mexico  and  Peru,  and  in  Colorado  possess  untold 
mineral  wealth,  but  square  mile  for  square  mile 
the  coal  measures,  and  the  iron,  copper  and  lead 
mines  found  in  one-half  of  the  area  of  Great 
Britain  surpass  any  one  of  these  regions  in  eco- 
nomic value.  Moreover,  there  can  be  found  no- 
where else,  another  condition  markedly  peculiar 
to  Britain, — the  juxtaposition,  within  a  very  limit- 
ed area,  of  vast  and  varied  mineral  deposits,  rich 
agricultural  land,  excellent  forests,  and  well-nigh 
perfect  interior  water  communications,  combined 
with  a  climate  which  permits  the  white  man  to 
work  under  most  favorable  conditions. 

Even  if  all  these  natural  advantages  were  not 
apparent  in  the  earliest  historical  times,  yet  the 
British  Isles  were  attractive  to  the  simple  bar- 
barians of  the  neighboring  lands  on  the  Continent, 
particularly  those  of  what  is  now  the  Netherlands 
and  northern  Germany.  These,  before  dikes  had 
been  built,  were  bleak  regions  of  alternate  forest 
and  marsh,  flanked  by  waste  stretches  of  sandy 
shore,  subject  to  constant  inundations.  There 
were   no  minerals,   like   the  tin   of   Cornwall,   to 


The  Geographic  Factor        171 

encourage  commerce,  while  the  level,  exposed 
plains  were  swept  by  warring  tribes  in  one  deso- 
lating invasion  after  another. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem  to  the  traveler  from 
America  or  from  Mediterranean  lands,  the  climate 
of  England  has  been  a  natural  endowment  which 
encouraged  immigration  in  times  long  past  as  it 
does  industry  in  the  present.  As  the  geographer 
Kirchhoff  has  observed,  the  winds  which  sweep 
over  this  region  from  the  North  Atlantic  are 
heavily  charged  with  ozone  so  that  the  sea-air 
is  felt  over  the  whole  archipelago,  while  the  abun- 
dant moisture  which  they  carry  sustains  the  water 
supply  of  the  rivers  and  the  brilliant  verdure  of 
the  landscape  at  nearly  every  season  of  the  year. 
Besides  giving  essential  aid  to  British  agriculture, 
the  high  humidity  of  this  region  of  mists  and 
fogs,  combined  with  its  hilly  character  and  abun- 
dant water  power,  has  provided  in  the  western 
part  of  the  island  all  the  conditions  essential  to 
the  remarkable  development  of  the  Lancashire 
textile  industry.  Likewise  the  cyclonic  storms  of 
these  latitudes  have  helped  to  rear  a  race  of  skill- 
ful, hardy  mariners  who  have  been  disciplined  in 
the  severest  school  of  navigation.  There  is,  how- 
ever, none  of  the  terrific  extremes  of  rainfall  and 
.tempest  which  have   oppressed   and  discouraged 


172  English  Leadership 

men  in  the  tropics,  nor  has  the  climate  of  these 
islands  permitted  the  stunting  of  man's  growth 
as  has  occurred  in  wide  areas  of  the  same  latitudes 
in  Asia  and  North  America.  Moreover,  British 
climate  has  had  a  peculiar  effect  upon  the  relative 
importance  of  the  neighboring  islands  of  Ireland 
and  Great  Britain.  The  rainfall  of  Ireland  is 
excessive  when  considered  in  connection  with  the 
drainage  system.  Consequently  agriculture  in  Ire- 
land is  severely  limited  through  the  inability  to 
grow  cereals,  while  central  England  is  in  part 
protected  from  excessive  precipitation  by  the  wall 
of  Welsh  mountains  in  the  west. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  state  precisely 
just  what  motives  actuated  the  Germanic  tribes 
of  Angles,  Saxons,  and  Jutes  to  begin  their  in- 
vasions of  Romanized  Britain  in  the  fifth  century 
of  our  era.  Probably  it  was  a  combination  of 
desire  for  adventure  and  conquest  for  its  own  sake 
with  the  pressure  of  hunger  and  dangerous  neigh- 
bors in  their  home  on  the  Continent.  Suffice  it 
to  say  that  once  embarked  upon  their  low,  dark 
ships  they  found  the  new  land  of  southern  and 
eastern  England  more  attractive  than  their  old 
homes,  and  the  work  of  conquest  not  too  difficult. 
As  every  school  boy  knows,  these  Teutonic  bar- 
barians easily  established  themselves  at  various 


The  Geographic  Factor       173 

points  on  the  coast  and  afterwards  pushed  up  the 
rivers  into  the  interior  and  gradually  mastered  the 
country  as  far  west  as  Wales  and  as  far  north  as 
the  Tyne.  To  what  degree  these  Anglo-Saxons 
exterminated  or  assimilated  the  original  inhabi- 
tants is  not  known.  We  do  know,  however,  that 
in  some  cases  they  used  both  methods,  depending 
in  large  measure  upon  the  obstinacy  of  the  re- 
sistance. The  result  was  undoubtedly  a  mixed 
people,  made  up  of  uncertain  proportions  of  Celtic 
Britons,  Romans,  and  Teutons,  whom  we,  for  lack 
of  a  better  name,  call  Anglo-Saxons. 

Just  what  the  historical  bearings  of  this  ethnic 
fusion  have  been,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  Pro- 
fessor Hasklns  in  his  "The  Normans  in  European 
History,"  is  not  disposed  to  attach  too  much  im- 
portance to  it.  "Only  a  formal  and  mechanical 
view  of  history,"  he  says,  "seeks  to  ticket  off  par- 
ticular races  against  particular  regions  as  the  sole 
sources  of  population  and  power;  only  false  na- 
tional pride  conceives  of  any  people  as  continually 
in  the  vanguard  of  civilization.  Races  are  mixed 
things,  institutions  and  civilization  are  still  more 
complex,  and  no  people  can  claim  to  be  a  unique 
and  permanent  source  of  light  and  strength." 
Professor  Goldwin  Smith  concurs  in  this  view: 
"The  further  we  go  in  these  inquiries  the  more 


174  English  Leadership 

reason  there  seems  to  be  for  believing  that  the 
peculiarities  of  races  are  not  congenital,  but  im- 
pressed by  primeval  circumstance.  Not  only  the 
same  moral  and  intellectual  nature,  but  the  same 
primitive  institutions,  are  found  in  all  the  races 
that  come  under  our  view;  they  appear  alike  in 
Teuton,  Celt  and  Semite.  That  which  is  not  con- 
genital is  probably  not  indelible,  so  that  the  less 
favoured  races,  placed  under  happier  circum- 
stances, may  in  time  be  brought  to  the  level  of 
the  more  favored,  and  nothing  warrants  inhuman 
pride  of  race.  But  it  is  surely  absurd  to  deny 
that  peculiarities  of  race,  when  formed,  are  im- 
portant factors  in  history." 

In  Green's  "Short  History  of  the  English  Peo- 
ple," the  "fair-haired  Saxon"  was  held  in  great 
admiration  and  it  has  become  almost  traditional, 
at  least  until  very  recent  years,  to  attribute  to  the 
early  Teutonic  conquerors  of  England  most  of  the 
admirable,  distinctive  qualities  of  the  modern 
Englishman.  Mr.  Earned  was  inclined  to  refer 
back  to  the  primitive  Teuton  the  germs  of  many 
English  institutions.  Without  attempting  to  de- 
cide between  the  respective  claims  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  Norman  schools  of  historians,  it  is  easy 
to  see  that  the  position  of  Great  Britain  was  the 
principal  determinant  of  what  the  eventual  racial 


The  Geographic  Factor        175 

amalgam  was  to  be.  If  England  had  been  as  re- 
mote as  Iceland,  it  certainly  would  now  have  a 
far  greater  ethnic  unity  and  in  all  probability 
would  never  have  undergone  the  Norman  con- 
quest. As  a  result  of  what  actually  happened  the 
English  were  conquered  without  being  destroyed  j 
the  Norman  invasion  meant  the  infusion  of  a  new 
element  without  the  total  supplanting  of  the  orig- 
inal population.  "Outside  of  Normandy,"  ac- 
cording to  Professor  Haskins,  "the  Normans  were 
but  a  small  folk,  and  sooner  or  later  they  in- 
evitably lost  their  identity.  They  did  their  work 
preeminently  not  as  a  people  apart,  but  as  a  group 
of  leaders  and  energizers,  the  little  leaven  that 
leaveneth  the  whole  lump.  Wherever  they  went 
they  showed  a  marvelous  power  of  initiative  and 
of  assimilation;  .  .  .  The  penalty  for  such  activ- 
ity is  rapid  loss  of  identity;  the  reward  is  a  large 
share  in  the  general  development  of  civilization. 
If  the  Normans  paid  the  penalty,  they  also  reaped 
the  reward,  and  they  were  never  more  Norman 
than  in  adopting  the  statesmanlike  policy  of  tol- 
.eration  and  assimilation  which  led  to  their  ulti- 
xnate  extinction." 

After  the  completion  of  the  Norman  conquest 
the  racial  identity  of  the  population  of  the  British 
Jsles  was  finally  determined-    Henceforth,  in  their 


176  English  Leadership 

island  home  they  were  to  work  out  their  historic 
destiny  undisturbed  by  any  further  violent  intru- 
sion of  the  foreigner.  The  process  of  the  modifi- 
cation of  nature  by  man  was  to  continue.  In  the 
succeeding  centuries,  steady  encroachments  upon 
the  forests  and  the  drainage  of  the  fens  were 
to  bring  larger  and  larger  areas  under  cultivation, 
but  there  were  to  be  no  such  striking  transforma- 
tions in  the  aspect  of  the  land  as  resulted  from 
the  deforestation  of  many  historic  regions  in 
North  Africa  and  the  Near  East  or  such  extensive 
reclamation  as  has  taken  place  recently  in  Egypt 
and  in  the  western  part  of  the  United  States.  The 
principal  conditions  of  habitat  were  now  fixed,  and 
in  this  island  home  the  English  people  were  des- 
tined to  work  out  the  problems  of  their  arduous 
but  glorious  future. 

The  path  of  one  who  would  trace  the  influence 
of  the  geographical  factors  in  English  history  is 
by  no  means  smooth.  The  influence  of  physical 
environment  on  human  affairs,  or  the  reciprocal 
action  of  man  and  nature,  has  been  discussed  ever 
since  the  days  of  the  Greek  philosophers.  Per- 
haps the  first  adequate  statement  of  the  problem 
was  made  by  the  French  thinker  Bodin  in  the  last 
quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century.  In  recent  years, 
the  controversy  has  waxed  warm  over  the  ques- 


The  Geographic  Factor        177 

tlon  as  to  whether  man  or  his  homeland,  nature 
or  nurture,  race  or  habitat,  heredity  or  environ- 
ment has  been  the  prevailing  influence  in  the  life 
of  the  individual   and  society. 

Before  considering  the  specific  geographical 
factors  which  have  played  so  large  a  part  in  the 
history  of  England  and  the  British  Empire,  it  is 
only  fair  to  admit  that  there  is  great  disagreement 
among  historians  as  to  the  general  nature  and 
direction  of  geographic  influence.  Some  would 
even  deny  any  important  influence  of  habitat  on 
historical  development  and  assert  that  race  is  the 
great  fundamental  fact  of  history.  In  other 
words,  an  Englishman  remains  an  Englishman 
wherever  he  makes  his  home,  in  whatever  climate 
and  under  whatever  physical  conditions  he  chances 
to  live.  Carlyle  went  even  further  in  proclaiming 
the  Great  Man  theory  of  history  and  denied  to 
either  race  or  physical  environment  any  power 
to  modify  essentially  the  course  of  human  history. 
To  him,  the  individual  genius  of  a  few  contributes 
all  that  is  noteworthy  in  the  progress  of  mankind; 
and  Emerson  in  his  "Representative  Men"  sup- 
ports Carlyle  in  this  view. 

Quite  opposed  to  all  this  are  the  theories  of 
the  naturalistic  or  materialistic  school  of  geog- 
raphers and  historians.     This  philosophy  of  his- 


178  English  Leadership 

tory  with  more  or  less  important  modifications  has 
been  defended  and  popularized  more  recently  by 
such  writers  as  Lecky  and  Bryce  in  England,  and 
by  Professor  Shaler  and  Miss  Ellen  Churchill  Sem- 
ple  in  America.  Through  their  writings  the  modern 
view  of  the  philosophy  of  history  has  been  modi- 
fied imperceptibly  but  completely,  so  that  it  is  well- 
nigh  impossible  for  us  to  conceive  the  course  of 
English  history,  which  is  now  under  our  consider- 
ation, apart  from  its  relation  to  the  broad  geo- 
graphic facts  which  have  indelibly  impressed  their 
influence  upon  it. 

Assuming  then,  as  a  working  hypothesis,  that 
"history  is  the  modification  of  man  by  nature  and 
of  nature  by  man,"  acting  through  the  influence 
of  climate,  food,  soil,  and  the  general  aspect  of 
nature,  we  will  be  able  to  observe  some  of  these 
effects  in  the  history  of  England. 

If  we  can  agree  with  Lord  Bryce  in  attribut- 
ing to  physiography  and  the  conditions  affecting 
human  industry  a  marked  influence  in  the  shaping 
of  a  people's  history  we  will  find  no  more  striking 
exemplification  of  the  workings  of  these  factors 
than  in  the  British  Isles.  It  is  true  that  these  in- 
fluences are  here  not  always  the  most  obvious, 
nor  as  simple  in  their  discernible  effects  as  may 
sometimes  be  seen  in  the  life  of  a  nomad  commu- 


The  Geographic  Factor        179 

nity  living  in  the  desert,  or  in  the  case  of  a  moun- 
taineer folk  like  the  Swiss  and  Scotch  highlanders, 
but  the  geographical  factor  will,  nevertheless,  be- 
come apparent  on  the  slightest  analysis.  A  study  of 
the  physiography  of  the  British  Isles  will  explain 
not  only  the  backwardness  of  Ireland,  and  the 
marked  characteristics  of  the  people  of  Wales 
and  the  Scottish  Highlands  but  will  also  enable 
us  to  understand  the  course  of  the  migrations  and 
conquests  and  consequent  racial  distribution  of 
the  inhabitants  of  these  islands,  past  aad  present. 
Whether  man  is  now  more  dependent  upon  the 
natural  conditions  which  surround  him  than  he 
was  in  the  past  need  not  enter  into  the  discus- 
sion. But  the  distribution  of  the  forests,  fens, 
rivers,  and  mountains  has  always  affected  the  den- 
sity of  population  and  the  conditions  of  life.  It 
is  physiography,  not  the  accidents  of  history,  which 
has  dictated  that  the  English  must  be  not  a  na- 
tion of  nomadic  shepherds,  nor  of  mountaineers, 
nor  indeed  an  exclusively  agricultural  people,  but 
rather  a  society  with  a  complex  industrial  and 
commercial  life. 

The  question  of  the  influence  of  the  geographi- 
cal environment  upon  the  ethnic  composition  and 
character  of  the  English  people  has  not  escaped 
much  learned  discussion.     Speaking  of  the  influ- 


i8o  English  Leadership 

ence  of  the  configuration  of  the  land  upon  its  in- 
habitants, Professor  Hinsdale  has  said,  "Nothing 
can  be  more  evident  than  that  these  facts  almost 
wholly  controlled  the  early  movement  of  races, 
such  as  migration,  and  that  they  powerfully  affect 
military  operations,  the  character  and  extent  of 
conquests,  the  size  and  the  boundaries  of  states, 
the  location  and  character  of  cities,  and  the  direc- 
tion, kind,  and  abundance  of  facilities  for  travel 
and  transportation."  The  situation  of  England 
as  it  fronts  the  shores  of  north  central  Europe 
was  an  invitation  to  the  nearest  Teutonic  people 
to  come  over  and  occupy  the  land.  Even  in  the 
days  of  primitive  seamanship  the  distance  from 
the  mouths  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Scheldt  to  the 
estuary  of  the  Thames  was  very  short,  while  less 
than  thirty  miles  separates  the  Dover  cliffs  from 
the  mainland  opposite  It  was  a  more  serious 
matter  for  a  large  body  of  people  to  cross  the 
North  Sea  from  Scandinavia,  but  the  difficulty 
was  partially  obviated  by  the  much  shorter  dis- 
tance from  the  Norwegian  fiords  to  the  coast  of 
Scotland.  Natural  harbors  were  to  be  found  in 
the  estuaries  of  the  English  rivers  and  the  North- 
men found  easy  access  to  the  interior  of  the  coun- 
try simply  by  following  the  river  courses.  There 
is  no  difficulty,  then,  in  realizing  how  readily  the 


The  Geographic  Factor        i8i 

island  of  Great  Britain  became  a  meeting  place 
of  all  races  of  northwestern  Europe.  Whether 
it  is  true  or  not,  as  some  biologists  assert,  that 
such  an  amalgamation  of  different  racial  stocks 
produces  a  more  vigorous  people,  need  not  con- 
cern us  here.  The  patent  fact  is  before  us  that 
British  geography  brought  upon  the  original  Cel- 
tic inhabitants  wave  after  wave  of  the  more  dar- 
ing, adventurous,  and  energetic  peoples  of  Eu- 
rope,— Romans,  Teutons,  Danes,  and  Normans, 
— which  have  in  unknown  proportions  been  fused 
into  what  is  called  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  Britain, 
by  her  island  position,  selected  her  own  inhab- 
itants; the  resulting  interaction  between  these  in- 
habitants and  their  environment  has  determined 
the  course  of  English  history. 

What  can  be  asserted,  in  general,  of  the  re- 
sult of  insular  life  upon  a  people?  Having  in 
mind  such  islands  as  that  ancient  seat  of  yEgean 
civilization,  Crete,  or  the  island  of  Sicily,  that 
meeting  place  of  three  great  historical  peoples, 
the  Phoenicians,  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  what 
general  inferences  may  be  drawn  regarding  the 
characteristics  of  islanders?  Miss  Semple,  in  her 
"Influences  of  Geographic  Environment,"  points 
out  that  island  life  tends  to  develop  marked  na- 
tional individuality  which  is  developed  by  isola- 


i82  English  Leadership 

tion  and  accompanied  often  by  a  precocious  civ- 
ilization. This  marked  individuality  of  island 
folk  is  regularly  seen  "in  combination  with  the 
opposite  fact  of  the  imminent  possibility  of  an  ex- 
pansive unfolding,  a  brilliant  efflorescence  fol- 
lowed by  a  wide  dispersal  of  its  seeds  of  culture 
and  empire."  After  remarking  that  these  island 
peoples  rarely  originate  the  elements  of  civiliza- 
tion, Miss  Semple  adds,  "For  that  their  area  is 
too  small.  But  whatever  seed  ripens  in  the  wide 
fields  of  the  continents  the  islands  transplant  to 
their  own  forcing-houses;  there  they  transform 
and  perfect  the  flower.  Japan  borrowed  freely 
from  China  and  Korea,  as  England  did  from  con- 
tinental Europe;  but  these  two  island  realms  have 
brought  Asiatic  and  European  civilization  to  their 
highest  stage  of  development.  Now  the  borrow- 
ers are  making  return  with  generous  hand.  The 
islands  are  reacting  on  the  continents.  Japanese 
ideals  are  leav^ening  the  whole  Orient  from  Man- 
churia to  Ceylon.  English  civilization  is  the 
standard  of  Europe.  'The  Russian  in  his  snows 
is  aiming  to  be  English,'  says  Emerson.  'England 
has  inoculated  all  nations  with  her  civilization, 
intelligence  and  tastes.'  " 

The  British  Isles,   as  Kirchhoff  has  said,  are 
especially  suited  to  be  the  home  of  a  hardy,  re- 


The  Geographic  Factor        183 

sourceful  people.  This  is  in  agreement  with  the 
view  held  by  the  English  writer,  Goldwin  Smith, 
who  maintains  that  islands  are  more  likely  than 
continental  areas  to  be  settled  by  a  bold  and  en- 
terprising race.  Migration  by  land  has  more 
often  been  the  result  of  some  outer  compulsion 
such  as  the  pressure  of  hostile  neighbors,  or  sim- 
ply the  consequence  of  the  wandering  habit,  and 
need  not  necessarily  betoken  any  particular  activ- 
ity or  enterprise.  On  the  other  hand,  the  migra- 
tion of  peoples  by  sea  in  ancient  times  was  not 
only  a  hazardous  enterprise  but  one  likely  to  weed 
out  the  timorous  and  the  inefficient.  History  has 
no  record  of  a  people  endowed  with  more  mag- 
nificent daring  than  the  Norsemen.  The  Greeks 
and  the  Phoenicians  were  timid  navigators,  by  com- 
parison, and  regularly  hugged  the  shore  in  their 
fear  of  what  Homer  called  the  "unfruitful"  sea. 
As  Goldwin  Smith  says,  "The  Northman  evidently 
felt  perfectly  at  home  on  the  ocean,  and  rode 
joyously,  like  a  seabird,  on  the  vast  Atlantic 
waves."  The  population  of  the  island  of  Great 
Britain  is  made  up  almost  entirely  of  a  highly  se- 
lected race, — daring,  resourceful,  adventurous 
seekers  after  freedom,  yet  willing  and  loyal  folr 
lowers  of  a  proved  and  acknowledged  leader. 
Readers  of  Wordsworth  are  familiar  with  the 


184  English  Leadership 

ode  in  which  he  associates  human  freedom  with 
the  mountains  and  the  sea.  The  mountaineers 
of  Wales  and  Scotland  have  sustained  the  Celtic 
tradition  of  liberty;  the  Anglo-Saxons  brought 
with  them  a  similar  spirit.  But  this  spirit  of  lib- 
erty, in  itself  a  product  of  historical  evolution, 
must  be  securely  protected  during  the  early  stages 
of  its  growth.  Such  a  protection  the  sea  affords 
to  an  island  population.  The  most  easily  recog- 
nized advantage  of  an  insular  position  is  freedom 
from  invasion.  No  country  can  be  absolutely 
secure  without  being  utterly  remote  from  the  re- 
gions of  civilization,  but  remoteness  is  a  relative 
matter.  England  is  remote  enough  behind  her 
sea  barriers  to  render  invasion  exceedingly  diffi- 
cult,— her  lands  have  not  been  harried  by  a  for- 
eign invader  for  seven  hundred  years.  This  ad- 
vantage, moreover,  is  not  merely  one  of  immunity 
from  foreign  conquest.  It  has  also  contributed 
to  the  political  liberty  and  prosperity  of  the  coun- 
try by  reducing  the  need  of  a  standing  army  and 
militaristic  institutions.  In  addition,  the  orderly 
development  of  national  life  had  not  been  ar- 
rested by  having  forced  upon  it  an  alien  civiliza- 
tion. 

The  insularity  of  England  has  of  course  re- 
sulted also  in  a  certain  cultural  isolation.     This 


The  Geographic  Factor        185 

has  tended  to  foster  the  self-sufficiency  and  the  pe- 
culiarities of  the  Englishman  and  has  prevented 
the  ready  influx  of  foreign  ideas.  But  England 
is  nevertheless  essentially  a  part  of  Europe,  while 
standing  somewhat  aloof  and  exercising  a  mod- 
erating influence  upon  the  affairs  of  the  Conti- 
nent. She  has  been  "the  asylum  of  vanquished 
ideas  and  parties."  Spanish  and  Portuguese  Jews 
fleeing  from  the  Inquisition,  French  Huguenots, 
after  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  and 
Netherland  fugitives  from  Spanish  tyranny  have 
In  turn  taken  refuge  in  England  and  given  their 
talents  to  the  common  store  of  English  national 
life.  Thus  English  insularity  has  been  tempered 
by  the  very  nearness  of  the  Island  to  the  Conti- 
nent. England  has  been  spared,  by  Its  situation, 
the  extreme  isolation  of  Iceland  or  that  of  Nor- 
way and  Ireland.  Foreign  Ideas  can  penetrate 
by  the  slow  process  of  infiltration;  they  cannot 
overwhelm  with  a  sudden  rush. 

Nor  can  It  be  denied  that  the  actual  area  or 
'extent  of  the  British  Isles  has  In  itself  had  a  pe- 
culiar influence.  It  has  always  been  recognized 
that  the  mere  fact  of  the  greater  size  and  nat- 
ural wealth  of  Great  Britain  as  compared  with 
Ireland  have  determined  very  largely  the  relations 
lof  the  two.     The  larger  island,  more  fortunately 


1 86  English  Leadership 

situated  in  regard  to  the  rest  of  Europe,  was 
bound  to  be  the  dominant  partner.  Ireland  was 
too  near  to  escape  the  orbit  of  British  influence 
and  too  small  and  poor  to  resist  successfully. 
Likewise,  the  superior  size  and  resources  of  Eng- 
land pointed  unmistakably  to  her  ultimate  triumph 
over  both  Wales  and  Scotland.  The  division  of 
Scotland  into  highlands  and  lowlands,  unfortunate 
from  the  point  of  view  of  Scotch  independence; 
and  the  poverty  of  the  Welsh  in  their  remote 
mountain  home  all  contributed  to  the  unavoid- 
able predominance  of  the  English.  Furthermore, 
the  area  of  these  islands  must  have  had  curious 
negative  effects.  It  is  unthinkable  that  the  course 
of  English  history  could  have  run  as  it  has,  if 
the  total  area  of  the  islands  had  been  no  more 
than  that  of.  Crete,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  it 
had  been  as  great  as  that  of  Australia.  In  the 
former  case,  England  must  have  remained  a  mere 
dependency  of  one  of  its  powerful  continental 
neighbors,  another  Corsica,  or  at  best  Sicily; 
while  if  the  island  had  been  very  much  larger 
we  must  imagine  it  seeking  to  dominate  its  con- 
tinental neighbors  much  more  successfully  and, 
in  a  sense,  more  ruinously  than  has  actually  oc- 
curred. It  is  quite  possible,  also,  that  if  England 
had  been  as  small  as  the  island  of  Crete  it  might 


The  Geographic  Factor        187 

have  had  a  brilliant  history  as  a  purely  maritime 
state,  a  kind  of  Tyre  or  Athens,  but  without 
the  solid  backing  of  a  large  agricultural  popula- 
tion, the  only  source  of  a  man-power  adequate 
to  play  a  great  role  as  an  empire-builder.  A 
greater  area,  on  the  other  hand,  must  have  de- 
stroyed the  balance  between  the  agricultural  and 
the  maritime  population  as  it  has  actually  existed; 
and  the  close  articulation  of  the  sea  and  land 
which  is  more  marked  in  Great  Britain  than  in 
any  other  similar  area  in  Europe  could  not  be  so 
dominant  a  characteristic  of  the  country.  Under 
these  circumstances,  the  national  life  might  have 
approximated  more  nearly  that  of  France  or  Ger- 
many, while  the  greater  mass  of  such  an  enlarged 
England  would  probably  have  rendered  a  Norman 
conquest  utterly  impossible. 

Perhaps  the  most  obvious  geographic  fact  about 
a  country  is  its  situation  with  reference  to  other 
lands.  The  position  of  the  British  Isles  has  long 
been  recognized  as  peculiarly  advantageous  to  her 
power  and  prosperity.  Although  these  islands 
are  on  the  extreme  verge  of  the  Continent  they 
are  not  a  mere  outpost  or  frontier  station.  Lying, 
as  they  do,  close  to  the  principal  countries  of  cen- 
tral and  western  Europe  and  athwart  the  mouths 
of  the  great  rivers  which  constitute  the  natural 


i88  English  Leadership 

highways  of  commerce,  England  is  rather  the  gate- 
way of  Europe  than  a  detached  and  isolated  por- 
tion of  it.  The  present  war  has  emphasized  the 
tremendous  importance  of  those  islands  in  their 
commanding  position  to  close  the  northern  shores 
of  central  Europe  to  the  trade  of  the  world;  ships 
from  the  Baltic  ports,  Scandinavia,  Hamburg, 
Rotterdam,  and  Antwerp  can  find  egress  from  the 
North  Sea  only  by  passing  under  the  guns  of  the 
British  fleet  and  shore  batteries.  English  seaports 
have  been  natural  entrepots  of  commerce  for  the 
greater  part  of  Europe  ever  since  the  opening  in 
the  sixteenth  century  of  the  new  trade-routes  to 
America  and  the  Far  East.  It  has  not  been 
merely  the  innate  mercantile  superiority  of  Eng- 
lishmen that  has  made  the  greatness  of  Liverpool 
and  London.  The  avenues  of  sea-born  trade  for 
the  northern  hemisphere  have  their  natural  focus 
in  the  British  Isles — a  fact  which  has  not  been 
altered  by  the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal  and  the 
consequent  restoration  of  the  Mediterranean  to 
something  like  its  former  commercial  importance. 
It  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  British 
Isles  have  a  highly  favorable  location  on  the 
earth's  surface,  not  only  because  of  their  imme- 
diate situation  near  the  European  continent  but 
.also  because  of  their  relation  to  the  great  land 


The  Geographic  Factor        189 

and  water  masses  of  the  globe.  If  New  Zealand 
lies  near  the  center  of  the  water  hemisphere,  so 
Great  Britain  lies  in  the  center  of  that  hemisphere 
which  contains  the  largest  extent  of  land.  If  a 
spectator  could  be  raised  above  London  to  a  suffi- 
cient height  to  see  half  the  globe  beneath  him, 
his  view  would  embrace  all  Europe,  Asia,  Africa, 
North  America  and  the  greater  part  of  South 
America;  only  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  a 
small  part  of  South  America,  would  lie  beyond  the 
horizon.  This  central  strategic  position,  while 
it  has,  of  course,  a  geographic  basis,  is  also 
largely  a  historical  product.  In  classical  times 
Britannia  and  Hibernia  lay  upon  the  uttermost 
fringe  of  the  known  world.  Their  isolation  from 
the  great  currents  of  early  historical  times  was 
greater  than  that  of  New  Zealand  in  the  present. 
Even  as  late  as  "the  spacious  days  of  good  Queen 
Bess"  England  was,  in  a  sense,  an  out-of-the-way 
land  not  unlike  the  Far  West  of  fifty  years  ago. 
"It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  all  history  a  more 
convincing  proof  of  the  influence  of  the  geographi- 
cal position  of  a  country  on  the  fate  of  its  in- 
habitants than  is  that  of  Britain.  Englishmen  of 
the  prediscovery  days  formed,  in  spite  of  the 
genius  and  valor  displayed  by  their  race  on  the 
fields  of  war,  of  poetry  and  science,  but  a  small 


190  English  Leadership 

population  of  comparatively  little  influence  on  the 
march  of  universal  history.  The  discoveries  of 
the  great  navigators  of  Latin  blood  enlarged  our 
knowledge  of  the  globe,  revealed  the  central  posi- 
tion of  Britain  on  the  land  hemisphere,  and  led 
unexpectedly  to  the  expansion  of  this  little  king- 
dom into  the  world-wide  British  Empire."  ^ 

Nor  is  the  effect  of  geography  less  marked  in 
the  internal  development  of  England.  The  island 
of  Great  Britain,  unlike  the  schoolboy's  Gaul,  is 
divided  into  five  parts,  determined  by  the  con- 
formation of  its  mountains  and  hills,  reenforced 
by  the  trend  of  its  principal  rivers.  Wales  and  the 
highlands  of  Scotland  stand  apart  as  two  independ- 
ent regions  strongly  marked  by  their  rugged  moun- 
tain character  and  relative  inaccessibility.  Of  the 
remaining  three  sections,  by  far  the  larger  and 
most  important  part  of  the  island,  the  northern- 
most is  the  Scottish  Lowlands,  separated  from 
England  by  the  Cheviot  Hills  and  Solway  Firth. 
England,  proper,  is  in  turn  divided  into  two  equal 
areas  by  the  valleys  of  the  Trent  and  the  Severn — 
the  land  lying  to  the  north  and  west  of  these 
rivers  being  higher,  more  wild  and  picturesque, 
and  more  turbulent  in  its  history,  while  to  the 
south  and  east  of  this  line  are  the  fertile  agricul- 

'  Kirchhoflf,  "Man  and  Earth,"  p.  147. 


The  Geographic  Factor        191 

tural  lands,  the  old  commercial  cities  and  earliest 
centers  of  wealth  and  culture.  Nearer  to  the 
mainland,  southeastern  England  was  always  first 
exposed  to  those  civilizing  Influences  that  spread 
from  the  Mediterranean  world  to  the  outer  edge 
of  the  Continent.  European  culture  therefore 
took  root  In  southern  England  and  afterward 
spread  northward,  so  that  It  Is  here  that  we  find 
London  and  Westminster,  Canterbury  and  Win- 
chester, Oxford  and  Cambridge. 

Taking  then  as  a  line  of  cleavage  between  south- 
eastern and  northwestern  England  the  diagonal 
drawn  from  the  mouth  of  the  Severn  on  the  Bristol 
Channel  to  the  mouth  of  the  Trent  on  the  Hum- 
ber,  It  will  be  found  that  the  differing  geographi- 
cal features  of  the  two  regions  have  had  a  potent 
influence  on  English  history.  Even  though  this 
line  Is  not  hard  and  fast  nor  marked  by  any  dis- 
tinct or  Impassable  barrier.  It  separates  two  re- 
gions as  opposed  In  their  historical  development 
as  the  North  and  the  South  In  the  United  States 
of  America.  In  the  beginning,  invaders  from 
across  the  Channel  and  the  North  Sea,  landing 
in  the  southeast,  pushed  the  earlier  inhabitants 
toward  the  northwest.  Hence  the  Romans,  then 
the  Angles  and  Saxons,  and  finally  the  Normans 
made  the  lands  south  of  the  Humber  more  com- 


192  English  Leadership 

pletely  their  own  and  left  Wales  and  Scotland  al- 
most untouched.  The  Celtic  tribes  In  the  remote 
west  and  north  were  consequently  not  exterminated 
but  have  survived  to  contribute  to  the  population 
of  Great  Britain  an  element  not  alien  but  differ- 
•ent. 

Furthermore,  the  richer  agricultural  region  of 
the  southeast  with  its  commercial  towns  and  more 
direct  communication  with  the  outside  world  was 
quicker  to  emancipate  itself  from  the  economic 
and  social  conditions  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Peasants'  Revolt  of  the  fourteenth  century  scarcely 
touched  the  rude,  undeveloped  peoples  of  the 
north.  The  southland,  populous,  wealthy  and 
progressive,  was  until  the  eighteenth  century  the 
home  of  English  radicalism,  while  the  feudal 
northwest,  dominated  by  the  nobles  and  clergy, 
stood  faithfully  by  the  king  and  the  established 
order.  London  was  the  sheet-anchor  of  the  Par- 
liamentary party  in  the  struggle  against  the  crown 
in  the  days  of  Cromwell.  The  south,  too,  had 
been  the  first  to  feel  the  new  Ideas  of  the  Renais- 
sance and  Reformation.  Here  republicanism  and 
Puritanism  throve,  while  the  landed  aristocracy  of 
the  pastoral  north  remained  staunchly  conserva- 
tive In  politics  and  religion. 

But  a  curious  inversion  of  these  respective  roles 


The  Geographic  Factor        193 

has  been  effected  by  geographical  factors  unreal- 
ized before  the  Industrial  Revolution.  Before: 
the  eighteenth  century,  when  England  was  a  com- 
mercial and  agricultural  country,  geography  fa- 
vored the  economic  superiority  of  the  southern 
portion  of  the  island;  but  when  the  new  processes 
and  inventions  of  Hargreaves,  Arkwright  and 
Watt  made  possible  the  extraordinary  develop- 
ment of  English  manufactures,  the  industrial  cen- 
ter of  gravity  shifted  to  the  northwest.  The  vital 
part  played  by  iron  and  coal  in  modern  industry 
gave  new  value  to  the  mines  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Newcastle,  Sheffield  and  Birmingham.  Fac- 
tories and  population  began  to  cluster  around  the 
northern  coal  measures.  The  infertility  of  the 
soil  in  the  northern  part  of  England,  in  South 
Wales  and  in  Scotland  was  not  an  impediment  to 
the  growth  of  factory  towns  and  a  great  urban 
population;  in  the  rising  seaports  of  Liverpool 
and  Glasgow  new  industrial  regions  found  gate- 
ways for  their  incoming  raw  materials  and  for 
outgoing  finished  products. 

These  economic  changes  were  likewise  reflected 
in  the  political  life  of  the  country.  English  lib- 
eralism gravitated  with  the  mass  of  the  population 
toward  factory  cities  like  Manchester  and  Birm- 
ingham; the  great  Reform  Bill  of  1832  was  in 


194  English  Leadership 

part  a  response  to  changes  in  social  conditions 
which  had  in  turn  resulted  from  the  rise  of  the 
new  industrialism  based  on  the  natural  resources 
of  the  northwest.  London  and  the  southeast, 
which  as  late  as  the  Glorious  Revolution  of  1688 
had  been  the  progressive  commercial  district,  was 
soon  outdistanced  by  these  rapidly  growing  indus- 
trial cities  of  the  north,  and  finally  has  come  to 
be  the  center  of  English  conservatism.  A  closely 
paclced  population  of  artisans  in  factory  towns 
forms  an  ideal  substructure  for  the  building-up  of 
a  liberal  party  with  a  radical  wing.  It  need  not 
surprise  us,  therefore,  that  Manchester,  three  gen- 
erations ago,  should  have  given  its  name  to  a  new 
school  of  political  and  economic  thought,  or  that 
the  northwest,  later,  should  produce  Gladstone, 
Bright,  Chamberlain  and  Lloyd-George. 

Geography,  as  we  have  seen,  has  been  a  potent 
factor  in  determining  English  political  affairs;  it 
has  been  even  more  potent  in  the  upbuilding  of 
England's  maritime  supremacy.  In  the  first 
known  theater  of  maritime  activity,  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  i?^.gean  Islands,  notably  the  Cretans, 
were  the  great  seafaring  people.  Some  time  later 
this  primacy  passed  to  the  Phoenicians  and  their 
great  colony  at  Carthage;  but  the  Greeks  had  al- 
ready emerged  as  a  rival  power  in  trade  and  col- 


The  Geographic  Factor        195 

onization.  Under  Roman  rule  the  Mediterranean 
was  a  highway  of  peaceful  commerce.  It  was  not 
until  after  the  barbarian  invasions  that  warfare 
on  the  sea  was  resumed  and  we  read  of  the  preda- 
tory Vandals  establishing  a  temporary  supremacy 
over  the  western  Mediterranean  basin.  During 
the  mediaeval  period  the  northernmost  wing  of 
the  Teutonic  race,  by  their  oversea  expeditions, 
laid  the  foundations  of  England,  while  later  still 
the  maritime  communities  in  and  about  northern 
Italy  dominated  the  trade-routes  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. But  of  all  the  peoples  who  have  used  the 
sea  in  peace  and  war  none  have  so  identified  them- 
selves with  it  or  utilized  it  so  successfully  as  the 
English. 

The  two  factors,  race  and  geography,  are  fun- 
damental in  explaining  the  expansion  of  England. 
However,  it  is  well  in  this  connection  to  speak  a 
word  of  caution.  As  Professor  Seeley  has  so 
clearly  pointed  out,  the  primacy  of  England 
among  the  maritime  nations  was  not  established 
until  comparatively  recent  times.  The  fact  that 
the  world  has  become  so  accustomed  to  acknowl- 
edging the  superiority  of  the  British  islanders  in 
all  activities  relating  to  the  sea,  has  led  to  the 
general  belief  that  this  was  always  so  and  that 
from  the  nature  of  the  English  people  it  could 


196  English  Leadership 

never  have  been  otherwise.  There  is  great  danger 
in  thus  taking  for  granted  the  innate  racial  su- 
periority of  the  Anglo-Saxons  in  this  as  in  other 
fields  of  human  endeavor,  and  in  ascribing  to  in- 
herent necessity  that  to  which  we  have  become 
accustomed.  It  may  seem  clear  to  us  that  the 
Anglo-Saxons,  descended  from  sea-rovers  and 
Vikings,  are  by  nature's  degree  foreordained  to 
follow  the  highways  of  the  sea  to  subdue  and 
replenish  the  earth.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is 
impossible  to  speak  of  England  as  a  maritime 
power  until  long  after  the  discovery  of  America. 
"Our  insular  position,"  says  Professor  Seeley, 
"and  the  fact  that  our  island  toward  the  West 
and  North  looks  right  out  on  the  Atlantic  ocean, 
may  lead  us  to  fancy  that  the  nation  must  always 
have  been  maritime  by  the  necessity  of  the  case. 
.  .  .  But  after  all  England  is  not  a  Norway;  it 
is  not  a  country  which  has  only  narrow  strips  of 
cultivable  land,  and  therefore  forces  its  popula- 
tion to  look  to  the  sea  for  their  subsistence.  Eng- 
land in  the  time  of  the  Plantagenets,  was  no 
mistress  of  the  seas;  in  fact  she  was  scarcely  a 
maritime  state  at  all.  Occasionally  in  wartime 
we  find  mediaeval  England  in  possession  of  a 
considerable  navy.  But  as  soon  as  peace  arrived 
the  navy  dwindled  away  again.    The  constant  com- 


The  Geographic  Factor        197 

plaints  of  piracy  in  the  Channel  show  how  little 
control  England  was  able  to  exercise  even  over 
her  own  seas."  Under  the  Plantagenets  the  Eng- 
lish were  more  warlike  than  at  any  later  time,  but 
they  exercised  their  fighting  spirit  in  campaigns  in 
France.  "The  glories  of  the  English  army  of 
those  days  greatly  eclipsed  those  of  the  English 
navy;  we  remember  the  victories  of  Crecy  and 
Poitiers,  but  we  have  forgotten  that  of  Sluys." 

In  spite  of  the  latent  capabilities  of  maritime 
adventure  which  lay  deep  in  Anglo-Saxon  nature, 
geography  dictated  that  these  powers  must  lie 
dormant  until  the  more  modern  world  should  open 
up  a  new  field  of  opportunity.  As  late  as  the 
fifteenth  century  the  English  were  narrowly  cir- 
cumscribed on  the  frontier  of  Europe  while  the 
cities  of  the  Hanseatic  League  and  the  northern 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean  were  more  advan- 
tageously placed  nearer  the  centers  of  the  world's 
commerce.  The  trading  activities  growing  out  of 
the  Crusades  had  deeply  stirred  many  localities  on 
the  Continent  but  it  only  barely  touched  the  re- 
mote British  Isles.  It  was  not  till  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century  that  the  amphibious  Blake, 
once  a  general,  later  an  admiral,  led  an  English 
fleet  into  the  Mediterranean.  When  in  the  six- 
teenth century  the  changed  commercial  interests 


198  English  Leadership 

of  Europe  shifted  the  business  center  of  gravity 
from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Atlantic  coast,  It 
was  Cadiz  and  Lisbon,  not  the  English  seaports, 
that  took  the  places  of  Venice,  Genoa  and  Barce- 
lona. It  Is  not  to  be  assumed,  of  course,  that  all 
maritime  life  must  wait  upon  and  be  regarded  as 
identical  with  colonization  and  empire.  Even  In 
the  sixteenth  century,  life  In  the  British  Isles  was 
more  maritime,  more  closely  connected  with  the 
sea  than  was  that  of  Spain.  The  waters  which 
wash  the  British  shores  abounded  In  fish,  and  the 
English  as  well  as  the  Dutch  were  rearing  a  hardy 
population  of  fishermen  and  sailors  engaged  in 
the  local  coasting  trade,  while  English  ships  plied 
actively  on  the  narrow  waters  between  England 
and  France  and  the  Low  Countries.  All  this  was 
natural  enough,  but  what  seems  strange  to  us 
was  the  postponement  of  England's  participation 
in  the  epic  of  discovery  and  exploration.  But  the 
early  preeminence  of  the  Italians,  Portuguese,  and 
Spaniards  must  not  drive  us  to  the  other  extreme 
of  being  too  apologetic  of  the  English.  In  spite 
of  Professor  Seeley's  modest  claims  for  his  coun- 
trymen, the  English  were  not  long  behind-hand  in 
the  race  for  dominion  over-seas.  And  if  they  were 
belated,  they  were  in  good  company.  The  French 
and  the  Dutch  were  likewise  late  in  feeling  the 


The  Geographic  Factor        199 

new  impulse,  while  the  great  merchant  seamen 
in  the  Hansa  sphere  of  influence  were  hopelessly 
sluggish  in  realizing  the  new  opportunities.  More- 
over, we  can  now  see  how  the  English  were  be- 
coming fairly  launched  upon  their  Atlantic  period 
of  history  even  in  the  Tudor  period,  although 
they  could  make  no  pretension  of  taking  the  lead 
in  the  unrivaled  explorations  of  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries.  It  was  a  ship  from  Bristol 
which  anticipated  Columbus  in  actually  reaching 
the  American  continent,  and  before  the  sixteenth 
century  was  over  the  Elizabethan  sailors  were 
playing  a  conspicuous  part  in  opening  up  the  New 
World.  Nor  was  the  defeat  of  the  Armada  a 
mere  flash  in  the  pan,  an  accidental  victory,  due 
to  the  genius  of  an  individual  commander.  It 
was  primarily  a  victory  of  seamanship,  of  men 
bred  to  the  life  of  the  sea,  of  professionals  over 
amateurs.  That  England  did  not  immediately 
thereafter  become  a  great  naval  power  in  a  tech- 
nical, military  sense  was  due  to  a  new  tendency 
In  national  policy  rather  than  to  any  incapacity. 
Conditions  of  insular  life  had  been  at  work  long 
enough  to  endow  the  English  with  all  the  poten- 
tialities of  maritime  supremacy  and  time  only  was 
needed  to  exhibit  them  on  a  magnificent  scale. 
There  is  no  need  to  dwell  upon  the  Individual 


200  English  Leadership 

achievements  of  English  navigators  and  admirals 
in  subsequent  times.  We  are  not  concerned  with 
personal  talent  but  rather  with  the  genius  of  a 
race  as  conditioned  by  its  geographical  environ- 
ment. Even  an  indelible  predilection  for  trade 
and  travel  might  have  been  stifled  during  the  ages 
by  unfavorable  conditions  of  habitat.  The  Swiss 
are  scarcely  more  inhibited  from  maritime  de- 
velopment than  an  island  population  denied  access 
to  the  sea  by  an  unfavorable  articulation  of  land 
and  water.  But  in  this  regard  the  geographical 
factor  was  altogether  favorable  to  the  English.  A 
profusion  of  natural  harbors,  almost  perfectly  dis- 
tributed around  the  whole  circumference  of  the 
island,  with  rivers  leading  back  from  them,  was 
only  one  element.  The  land  was  abundantly  sup- 
plied with  ship  timber  and  skilled  artisans  to  uti- 
lize it,  while  the  population  was  large  enough  and 
rich  enough  to  feel  those  commercial  needs  which 
impelled  them  to  trade  with  their  neighbors.  Per- 
haps all  this  might  not  have  been  sufficient  to  give 
the  United  Kingdom  over  two-thirds  of  the  ocean- 
going tonnage  of  the  world.  Less  than  a  century 
ago,  when  a  general  progress  in  the  mechanic  arts 
led  to  a  revolution  in  ship-building,  the  English 
took  every  advantage  of  the  changed  conditions. 
The  Industrial  Revolution  had  given  them  what 


The  Geographic  Factor       201 

was  nearly  a  monopoly  in  the  building  of  steam 
machinery  so  that  the  transition  from  the  age  of 
sailing  ships  to  steam  navigation  only  confirmed 
their  superiority.  The  change  from  wooden  to 
iron  and  steel  ships,  which  came  still  later,  could 
only  help  that  nation  which  led  the  world  in  iron 
and  steel  production.  Nature  again  conferred  an 
inestimable  boon  upon  England's  shipping  interests 
when  she  gave  her  the  Welsh  coal  fields.  Coal  suit- 
able for  fuel  on  steamships  is  distributed  very  spar- 
ingly around  the  world,  so  that  the  presence  of  ex- 
cellent bunker  coal  in  South  Wales,  near  tide- 
water, has  been  a  benefit  beyond  all  calculation  to 
English  shipping  interests. 

It  would  be  unprofitable  in  this  connection  to 
enumerate  further  the  advantages  which  this  island 
people  have  derived  from  the  situation,  physi- 
ography and  natural  products  of  their  island  home. 
But  there  is  another  consideration  which  now 
forces  itself  upon  our  attention.  Mr.  Earned  in 
his  essay  refers  to  the  peculiarities  of  English  emi- 
gration and  colonization.  Industries  connected 
with  the  sea  and  even  extensive  trade  relation  with 
distant  countries  need  not  necessarily  lead  a  nation 
to  found  a  colonial  empire,  as  witness  Norway. 
But  we  can  now  with  our  historical  perspective 
perceive  how  certain  geographical  considerations 


202  JEnglish  Leadership 

led  to  the  foundation  of  a  Greater  Britain.  The 
fascinating  subject  of  the  political  organization  of 
the  British  Empire  is  already  preempted  by  Mr, 
Larned,  but  the  geographical  substructure  upon 
which  that  imposing  edifice  is  reared  deserves  some 
discussion  in  this  essay. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  one-fifth  of  the  land 
surface  of  the  globe  and  something  like  one-fourth 
of  the  earth's  population  are  in  the  British  Empire. 
Its  various  shores  are  washed  by  the  Seven  Seas 
and  it  enjoys  or  endures  every  variety  of  climate 
and  every  degree  of  fertility  and  aridity  from  the 
polar  regions  to  the  tropics.  The  component  parts 
of  the  empire  are  nearly  equally  divided  between 
the  northern  and  the  southern  hemispheres  and 
among  the  various  continents  so  that  there  is  a 
complete  diversification  of  industry.  The  settle- 
ments of  the  English-speaking  people  not  only  com- 
pletely encircle  the  globe  but  they  have  taken  pos- 
session of  the  choicest  land  from  the  point  of 
view  of  productivity  as  well  as  suitability  for  the 
homes  of  white  men.  It  is  a  mere  truism  to  say 
that  the  British  Empire  is  based  upon  the  sea- 
power  of  England  and  that  its  highways  of  com- 
munication are  the  sea.  That  this  empire  has 
an  economic  foundation  and  is  knit  together  by 
a  multiplicity  of  commercial  interests  rather  than 


The  Geographic  Factor       203 

held  down  by  brute  force  goes  without  saying. 
Our  question  is,  then,  what  geographical  factors 
have  entered  into  the  production  of  this  imperial 
fabric? 

This  question  can  not  be  answered  by  reference 
solely  to  the  maritime  Instincts  of  the  English  peo- 
ple, together  with  their  insular  position  and  ac- 
cessibility to  the  sea.  In  a  general  sense  all  Europe 
with  its  peninsular  lands  and  its  large  and  intel- 
ligent population  is  peculiarly  fitted  to  expand  its 
commerce,  civilization,  and  political  rule  over  the 
rest  of  the  earth.  This  is  just  what  has  been  hap- 
pening during  the  last  four  centuries  and  the  Eng- 
lish have  only  been  In  the  lead  and  forefront  of 
this  movement.  Some  one  has  said  that  ancient 
Hellas  was  "the  most  European  of  European 
lands."  If  this  is  literally  true  the  British  Isles 
stand  next  to  ancient  Greece  in  the  possession  of 
especially  European  attributes  with  the  further  Im- 
portant advantage  of  possessing  extraordinary 
natural  resources.  It  may  be  said  then  that  Eng- 
land is  Europe  only  more  so,  and  differs  from 
its  continental  neighbors  only  in  possessing  the 
European  character  In  a  higher  degree.  If  the 
geographical  advantages  possessed  by  the  English 
people  in  combination  with  their  own  good  fortune 
and  the  ill-luck  of  some  of  their  principal  rivals 


204  English  Leadership 

have  somehow  given  them  a  unique  position  in 
the  world  to-day,  this  can  only  be  understood  in 
the  light  of  the  actual  facts  of  the  evolution  of 
the  empire. 

The  first  step  in  the  territorial  evolution  of  the 
British  Empire  was  the  unification  of  all  the  British 
Isles  under  one  political  sovereignty.  This  in  it- 
self was  a  long,  slow  process  and  could  not  be 
undertaken  until  the  period  of  foreign  invasions 
was  over.  We  cannot  think  of  the  present  im- 
perial domain  as  based  upon  England  alone.  Eng- 
lish invasion  into  extra-European  lands  could  only 
be  safely  begun  after  the  solution  of  the  Welsh, 
Scotch,  and  Irish  question.  At  the  same  time  it 
is  more  than  likely  that  the  preservation  of  dis- 
tinctive qualities  among  these  junior  members  of 
the  British  family  has  contributed  to  the  richness 
as  well  as  variety  of  the  resultant  civilization.  We 
now  all  agree  with  Matthew  Arnold  in  appraising 
highly  the  Celtic  element  in  the  British  population. 
Vexatious  as  these  domestic  problems  have  been 
to  English  policy  they  have  probably  helped  to 
save  the  life  of  these  islands  from  a  monotonous 
uniformity.  The  evils  of  disunity  were  substan- 
tially overcome  before  the  young  empire  was 
forced  to  meet  the  great  external  dangers  personi- 
fied in  Louis  XIV  and  Napoleon.     Nature  had 


The  Geographic  Factor       205 

placed  the  several  British  Isles  too  near  together 
to  become  eventually  anything  but  one  family,  but 
they  were  divided  by  the  sea  and  the  mountains 
sufficiently  to  perpetuate  interesting  and  extremely 
valuable  individual  characteristics. 

Confronting  successive  foreign  enemies  at  the 
threshold  of  her  entry  into  the  imperial  estate, 
geography  selected  for  England  not  only  her 
friends  but  her  enemies  and  profoundly  influenced 
her  foreign  policy.  Leaving  to  one  side  the  futile 
struggle  of  the  Hundred  Years'  War  at  the  close 
of  the  mediaeval  period,  we  can  see  how  the  loca- 
tion of  England  projected  her  into  a  conflict  with 
any  great  military  power  controlling  the  Low 
Countries.  Even  before  the  Tudors  the  French 
overlordship  of  Flanders  brought  them  into  con- 
flict with  the  English  kings.  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury the  inclusion  of  the  Netherlands  in  the  Span- 
ish dominion,  rather  than  the  differences  between 
the  Protestants  and  Catholics,  precipitated  the 
struggle  between  Philip  II  and  Elizabeth.  The 
buccaneering  exuberance  of  England's  young  sea- 
power  furnished  added  complications  and  later  ex- 
perience made  the  control  of  the  narrow  seas  be- 
tween England  and  the  Continent  a  settled  feature 
of  English  policy.  So  consistently  have  the  English 
followed  this  national  policy  that  it  now  seems 


2o6  English  Leadership 

inevitable  that  they  should  become  involved  in  in- 
ternational difficulties  if  not  actual  war  with  any 
great  military  power  that  seeks  to  dominate  Hol- 
land or  Belgium.  After  the  war  with  Spain  in 
the  time  of  Philip  II,  the  ambition  of  Louis  XIV 
to  secure  the  Low  Countries  brought  England  into 
the  conflict,  and  a  similar  situation  arose  a  century 
later  with  Revolutionary  France  and  Napoleon. 
There  is,  therefore,  ample  precedent  for  the  Brit- 
ish defense  of  Belgium  against  Germany  in  the 
present  war. 

Mr.  Mackinder  has  remarked  that  England  was 
"of  Europe  but  not  in  Europe"  and  this  is  true 
enough  to  explain  a  certain  aloofness  of  the  Eng- 
lish from  ordinary  European  rivalries  and  her  de- 
votion to  the  principle  of  the  balance  of  power. 
The  progress  of  military  science  and  the  formation 
of  powerful  centralized  states  in  western  Europe 
discouraged  active  participation  by  the  English  in 
continental  wars  and  steadily  diverted  them  to  a 
more  thorough  pursuit  of  commercial  interests. 
England's  steadily  growing  strength  was  hence- 
forth to  be  thrown  more  exclusively  against  any 
nation  that  appeared  in  the  lists  as  a  commercial 
rival.  The  growing  importance  of  the  mercantile 
class  likewise  deflected  England  from  militaristic 
adventures,  and  with  enlightened  selfishness  made 


The  Geographic  Factor       207 

their  country's  foreign  policy  conform  to  its  eco- 
nomic interests.  To  be  sure  individual  initiative 
and  enterprise  has  usually  preceded  government 
aid,  or  even  protection,  in  the  carving  out  of  new 
territory  for  the  British  Empire.  But  seldom  have 
the  pioneers  in  trade  and  colonial  enterprise  failed 
to  win  a  sympathetic  backing  from  the  govern- 
ment. This  has  been  illustrated  repeatedly  in 
India,  Africa  and  Australasia,  where  foothold  has 
been  secured  by  private  persons  engaged  in  busi- 
ness to  be  followed  up  later  by  active  governmental 
protection  and  participation,  until  finally  a  new 
colony  was  founded  or  a  new  territory  conquered. 
This  apparently  planless  and  happy-go-lucky 
up-building  of  the  English  dominion  beyond  the 
seas  has  excited  the  wrathful  scorn  of  the  Germans. 
They  have  pointed  out  repeatedly  that  the  English 
have  succeeded  only  by  the  most  undeserved  good 
luck,  combined  with  occasional  flashes  of  intelli- 
gent brutality.  It  must  be  conceded  that  good 
fortune  has  often  attended  on  English  ventures 
in  imperialism.  It  was  no  merit  of  the  English 
but  the  most  fortunate  circumstance  of  their  isola- 
tion which  spared  them  the  desolation  which  the 
Thirty  Years'  War  brought  upon  Germany,  and 
this  is  only  one  example  of  the  sort  of  affliction 
which  was  visited  upon  the  peoples  of  the  Euro- 


2o8  English  Leadership 

pean  continent.  English  military  prowess,  even 
though  it  helped,  was  not  the  principal  cause  of 
the  decline  of  Spain  in  the  seventeenth  century  nor 
the  squandering  of  the  resources  of  France  in  the 
later  dynastic  wars.  Geography  not  only  helped 
England  directly  in  countless  ways,  but  it  indirectly 
promoted  British  interests  by  helping  to  destroy 
her  enemies.  Wars  not  only  crippled  rival  in- 
dustry on  the  Continent  but  drove  to  England  thou- 
sands of  skilled  artisans  who  became  an  integral 
part  of  English  industry.  At  a  time  when  France 
was  England's  principal  rival,  the  illiberal  treat- 
ment by  France  of  her  Huguenot  population  in- 
jured French  manufactures  and  sent  these  talented 
exiles  to  seek  an  asylum  in  England;  while  a  similar 
illiberality  of  the  English  government  toward  its 
religious  nonconformists  sent  admirable  colonists 
to  become  empire-builders  in  the  New  World. 

Good  luck  and  geography  combined  often  facili- 
tated British  progress  toward  world  dominion  in 
most  curious  ways.  By  intrinsic  merit  and  heroic 
endeavor  the  Portuguese  deserved  to  be  a  formid- 
able rival.  However,  they  lacked  the  population 
and  natural  resources  to  give  them,  in  Europe,  the 
broad  basis  of  a  colonial  empire.  Their  ultimate 
failure,  moreover,  was  assured  by  their  being  ex- 
posed without  natural   frontiers  to  the   military 


The  Geographic  Factor       209 

power  of  Spain.  The  sixty  years'  "Babylonian 
Captivity"  as  a  conquered  Spanish  province  was 
not  only  a  check  to  the  country's  development  but 
made  Portugal  thereafter  dependent  upon  foreign 
support  to  maintain  her  independence.  Thus  Por- 
tugal became  a  client  state  of  England's  instead  of 
a  serious  opponent.  Indeed,  by  a  curious  turn 
of  fortune,  Bombay  passed  from  the  hands  of 
the  Portuguese  to  the  British  as  a  dowry  of  the 
Portuguese  wife  of  an  English  king.  This  was 
soon  to  strengthen  the  position  of  the  English  in 
India  and  proportionately  injure  their  rivals. 
Again  it  was  good  luck  rather  than  intelligent 
policy  that  secured  Gibraltar  and  so  led  the  way 
to  England's  becoming  a  great  Mediterranean 
power.  A  fortunate  combination  of  circumstances 
rather  than  foresight  took  the  English  to  Malta 
and  to  Egypt;  but  enough  has  surely  been  said  to 
illustrate  this  point.  Geography,  which  often 
made  the  mistakes  and  misfortune  of  England's 
rivals  fatal,  often  rendered  her  own  innocuous.  A 
temporary  weakness  of  the  government  of  Eng- 
land, due  to  the  incapacity  of  the  king  or  a  civil 
war,  did  not  immediately  lay  the  island  open  to 
easy  conquest.  Her  rapidly  growing  population 
nourished  by  the  productivity  of  the  soil  and  the 
varied  facilities  of  industry  furnished  a  reservoir 


210  English  Leadership 

from  which  to  stock  her  colonial  possessions.  Thus 
she  could  make  full  use  of  whatever  opportunity 
chance  or  manifest  destiny  brought  to  her. 

In  no  part  of  the  world  has  the  work  of  Eng- 
land as  a  colonizer  and  empire  builder  been  more 
strikingly  exemplified  than  in  North  America.  The 
late  start  which  the  English  made  in  the  actual 
establishment  of  colonies,  might  under  different 
circumstances  have  proved  fatal  to  their  ultimate 
success.  For  over  one  hundred  years  after  the 
discovery  of  America  the  Spanish  and  the  Portu- 
guese were  permitted  to  select  the  sites  of  their 
colonies  and  occupy  as  much  of  the  land  of  the 
new  continent  as  they  desired,  undisturbed  by  any 
interference  of  the  English  or  French.  Fortu- 
nately for  the  future  Anglo-Saxon  supremacy  in 
North  America,  the  Portuguese  directed  their 
efforts  to  South  America,  Africa,  and  southeastern 
Asia.  The  Spaniards  followed  in  a  general  way 
the  tracks  of  Columbus  and  concentrated  their 
efforts  upon  the  West  Indies,  and  Central  and 
South  America.  The  initial  impulse  which  was 
given  to  exploration  and  settlement  in  this  region 
was  reenforced  by  the  finding  of  precious  metals  in 
Mexico  and  Peru.  For  generations  afterwards, 
the  energies  of  Spain  were  concentrated  here,  leav- 
ing the  northern  part  of  the  American  continent 


The  Geographic  Factor       211 

to  others.  This  was  largely  accident,  although  the 
winds  and  ocean  currents  had  been  the  chief  factors 
in  taking  Columbus  over  the  course  which  he  sailed 
and  bringing  him  to  the  particular  portion  of  the 
newly  discov^ered  lands  which  he  actually  reached. 

Similarly,  the  claims  in  the  New  World  which 
were  staked  out  by  the  English,  French,  and  Dutch 
were  determined  in  the  first  instance  mainly  by 
geographical  considerations.  The  North  Atlantic 
is  relatively  narrow  between  Newfoundland  on 
the  one  side  and  Ireland  and  Brittany  on  the 
other.  Knowledge  that  the  Spaniards  had  already 
preempted  the  lands  for  the  south  also  directed 
the  later  arrivals  to  the  more  northern  portion  of 
North  America.  All  these  influences  combined  to 
apportion  in  a  rough  way  the  newly  discovered 
lands  among  the  maritime  powers. 

The  new  conditions  of  life  which  the  English 
and  French  found  awaiting  them  were  arduous 
enough  to  discourage  the  timid  and  weed  out  the 
unfit,  without  absolutely  discouraging  immigration 
from  Europe.  The  climate  of  our  Atlantic  sea- 
board is  more  rigorous  than  that  of  France  and  the 
British  Isles  but  it  is  a  white  man's  country  and 
makes  no  impossible  demands  upon  a  European's 
powers  of  adaptation.  South  of  Chesapeake  Bay 
many  districts  suffered  from  malaria  which,  com- 


212  English  Leadership 

bined  with  the  hot  summers,  put  a  premium  upon 
negro  slavery.  On  the  northern  end  of  the  habit- 
able area,  in  the  St.  Lawrence  region,  agriculture 
was  made  difficult  by  severe  winters  and  a  thin 
soil.  Physiography  and  climate,  therefore,  dis- 
couraged the  growth  of  a  dense  population  in  what 
is  now  lower  Canada  and  hampered  the  growth 
of  the  French  settlements  there,  despite  the  profits 
in  the  fur  trade. 

The  main  outlines  of  the  growth  of  the  English 
colonies  were  also  fixed  fairly  early  by  these  same 
natural  features.  The  climate,  the  configuration 
of  the  land,  the  presence  or  absence  of  natural 
harbors,  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  the  fauna 
and  flora  directed  industry  into  this  or  that  chan- 
nel. The  mountain  wall  of  the  Appalachians 
flanked  by  dense  forest  growths  opposed  a  mighty 
barrier  to  westward  migration,  while  the  warlike 
aborigines  assisted  the  mountains  and  forests  in 
hemming  in  the  English  colonists  close  to  the  At- 
lantic shore-land. 

The  struggle  was  not  decided  by  these  natural 
features  alone,  but  they  contributed  mightily  to 
the  victory  of  the  English.  Mr.  Earned  has 
pointed  out  how  the  policies  of  the  home  govern- 
ment of  France  and  England  affected  the  conflict 
in  America  and  we  will  not  labor  the  point  further. 


The  Geographic  Factor       213 

The  English  colonial  institutions  were  worked  out 
principally  in  connection  with  the  growth  of  the 
American  colonies  and  this  experience  has  been 
utilized  wisely  in  the  governance  of  similar  settle- 
ments in  other  parts  of  the  world. 

The  geographical  advantages  enjoyed  by  the 
British  Empire  in  the  Great  War  are  hard  to 
exaggerate.  The  fervent  loyalty  of  the  Dominions 
is  a  tribute  to  English  political  achievement,  but 
the  direct  bearing  on  the  struggle  of  British  sea- 
power  Is  closely  correlated  with  her  strategic  posi- 
tion astride  all  the  chief  lines  of  water  communi- 
cation. Reference  has  been  made  before  to  the 
many  advantages  of  the  location  of  the  British 
Isles  relative  to  the  neighboring  coast  of  Europe. 
But  the  possession  of  such  key-positions  as  Gibral- 
tar, Malta,  the  Suez  Canal,  Aden,  Ceylon,  Singa- 
pore, and  Hong-Kong — not  to  mention  a  multi- 
tude of  coaling-stations  and  naval  bases  in  every 
part  of  the  world — enormously  facilitates  the  oper- 
ations of  the  Allied  fleets.  The  instinct  for  mari- 
time exploration  and  discovery  which  led  Drake, 
Cook,  and  Vancouver  into  distant  seas  not  only 
gave  England  title  to  the  richest  portions  of  the 
earth  for  colonization  but  also  secured  to  her 
the  best  natural  harbors  and  military  and  com- 
mercial positions.     Two  places  of  supreme  im- 


214  English  Leadership 

portance  for  ocean  transportation  which  the  Eng- 
lish barely  missed  acquiring  have  fallen  to  their 
American  kinsmen,  so  that  Hawaii  and  the 
Panama  Canal  now  perfectly  supplement  the  pre- 
viously won  British  possessions  in  the  working  out 
of  Allied  naval  strategy. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  too  much  to  claim  that  the 
hope  of  the  world  now  rests  in  the  continued  con- 
trol of  the  sea  by  the  Anglo-Saxon,  at  least  until 
a  new  world-order  shall  have  brought  about  its 
internationalization.  The  uninterrupted  flow  of 
men  and  supplies  to  Europe  from  America  and  the 
British  Dominions  is  surely  a  condition  precedent 
for  the  success  of  the  Allied  arms.  If  the  natural 
advantages  of  the  British  Isles  in  the  selection 
of  their  inhabitants  in  the  beginning,  plus  the  later 
triumphs  in  trade  and  colonization,  have  aroused 
the  fear  and  envy  of  modern  Germany,  it  is  but 
the  Irony  of  history  that  this  island  people  by 
their  spirit  of  high  maritime  adventure  should 
break  the  power  of  the  land  despotism.  A  hun- 
dred years  ago,  men  talked  of  England  as  the 
modern  Carthage  and  they  spoke  of  "perfidious 
Albion"  as  the  equivalent  of  "Punic  faith."  Even 
now  Prussian  militarism  can  see  only  weakness  in 
an  empire  held  together  chiefly  by  commercial  in- 
terests and  a  spirit  of  voluntary  association.     But 


The  Geographic  Factor        215 

when  the  day  came,  England  kept  her  faith  with 
Belgium  and  with  France;  and  the  Dominions — 
the  "Lion's  Whelps"  of  Kipling — needed  neither 
compulsion  nor  exhortation. 

Geography  and  an  historical  evolution  continu- 
ously influenced  by  the  geographical  factors  of  the 
sea  and  insular  life  have  made  Great  Britain  the 
heart  of  a  mighty  empire,  bound  together  by  a 
community  of  interests  and  ideas.  Political  liberty 
of  the  individual  citizen  and  of  the  several  self- 
governing  dependencies  is  fundamental  to  its  pros- 
perity and  permanence.  Imperial  federation,  with 
its  unity  based  upon  the  common  heritage  of  demo- 
cratic institutions  and  the  unrestricted  use  of  the 
ocean  highways,  gives  us  the  pattern  of  a  newer 
and  better  ordering  of  the  relations  of  all  the  peo- 
ples of  the  earth.  The  Englishman,  Tennyson,  has 
expressed  it  perfectly  in  the  "Parliament  of  Man, 
the  Federation  of  the  World." 


ENGLISH   CONTRIBUTIONS  TO 
SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


Grace  F.  Caldwell 


ENGLISH   CONTRIBUTIONS  TO 
SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 

The  English  mind,  we  are  often  told,  has  two 
pet  aversions, — a  joke  and  a  work  of  art.  What- 
ever may  be  their  shortcomings,  however,  in  wit 
and  humor,  or  in  the  arts,  the  English  certainly 
hold  no  inconsiderable  place  in  the  evolution  of 
scientific  thought,  particularly  of  that  practical  and 
altruistic  thought  which  looks  toward  social  bet- 
terment. Nothing  could  be  more  characteristic 
of  the  English  attitude  toward  science  than  the 
words  spoken  by  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  that  never 
wearying  champion  of  the  "cause  of  humanity," — 
words  spoken  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago,  when, 
at  a  meeting  of  the  Royal  Society  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science,  he  presented  the  Copley  medal 
to  the  French  physicist,  Frangois  Arago,  in  honor 
of  his  discovery  of  the  property  possessed  by 
bodies  in  general  to  be  affected  by  magnetism: 
"As  one  of  our  Fellows,  his  discoveries  have  the 
same  interest  for  us  that  they  have  for  his  brethren 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences.     We,  I  trust, 

219 


220  English  Leadership 

shall  never  be  behind  them  In  dignity  and  noble- 
ness of  sentiment;  far  be  from  us  that  narrow 
policy  which  would  contract  the  minds  of  indi- 
viduals and  injure  the  interest  of  nations,  by  cold 
and  exclusive  selfishness;  which  would  raise  the 
greatness  of  one  people  by  lowering  the  standard 
of  that  of  another.  As  in  commerce,  so  In  science, 
no  country  can  become  worthily  preeminent  except 
in  profiting  by  the  wants,  resources  and  wealth 
of  its  neighbors.  Every  new  discovery  may  be 
considered  as  a  new  species  of  manufacture,  awak- 
ening novel  industry  and  sagacity,  and  employing, 
as  it  were,  new  capital  of  mind.  When  Newton 
developed  the  system  of  the  universe,  and  estab- 
lished his  own  glory  and  that  of  his  country  on 
imperishable  foundations  he  might  be  regarded 
as  giving  a  boon  to  the  civilized  world  for  which 
no  adequate  compensritlon  could  ever  be  made; 
yet  even  In  this  the  most  difficult  and  sublime  field 
of  discovery  Britain  has  been  paid,  if  not  fully, 
yet  fairly,  by  the  labors  of  Euler,  La  Grange,  and 
above  all,  Laplace;  perfecting  the  theory  of  the 
lunar  motions  and  planetary  perturbations,  and 
affording  data  of  infinite  importance  in  the  theory 
and  practice  of  navigation.  Fortunately  science, 
like  that  nature  to  which  It  belongs.  Is  limited 
neither  by  time  nor  by  space.     It  belongs  to  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     221 

world  and  is  of  no  country  and  no  age.  The 
more  we  know,  the  more  we  feel  our  ignorance 
and  the  more  we  feel  how  much  remains  unknown ; 
in  philosophy,  the  sentiment  of  the  Macedonian 
hero  can  never  apply, — there  are  always  new 
worlds  to  conquer." 

Such  a  conception  of  science  has  been  character- 
istic of  the  English-speaking  peoples  throughout 
their  history.  They  have  given  out  to  the  world 
discoveries  and  inventions  which  have  changed  the 
whole  face  of  the  earth.  They  have  covered  its 
seas  with  ships,  and  its  land  with  a  network  of 
railways  and  trolleys,  telegraphs  and  telephones. 
They  have  brought  together  products  from  re- 
motest parts  of  the  earth,  and  built  factories  filled 
with  machinery  for  transforming  these  raw  ma- 
terials into  manufactured  articles  which  increase 
man's  comfort,  add  to  his  leisure,  multiply  his 
powers,  and  so  provide  almost  unlimited  oppor- 
tunity for  world-wide  social  betterment.  But  all 
these  things  the  English-speaking  peoples  could 
never  have  done,  had  they  not  always  been  eager 
searchers  after  truth  and  willing  benefactors  of 
mankind, — had  they  not  been,  as  have  no  other 
people,  the  great  *'melting-pot"  of  culture,  in  which 
has  been  blended,  fused  and  clarified  all  that  is 


222  English  Leadership 

of  permanent  value  in  human  experience,  from 
that  of  primitive  man  to  the  present. 

In  the  assimilation  of  these  cultural  elements, 
the  geography  of  England  and  later  of  America 
has  been  in  large  measure  a  determining  influence. 
In  ancient  times,  when  the  center  of  civilization 
was  in  the  Mediterranean  world,  England  was  off 
on  the  outermost  rim  of  the  civilized  area, — a 
remote  island  cut  off  from  the  Continent  and  com- 
pletely out  of  the  current  of  civilized  thought,  an 
island  in  which  the  rest  of  the  world  was  Interested 
only  because  of  its  mines  of  tin  and  copper.  These 
it  was  which  first  attracted  clvlUzation  to  British 
shores.  Visited  by  the  Phoenicians,  then  by  the 
Greeks,  and  finally  conquered  and  occupied  by  the 
Romans,  England  was  first  Introduced  to  Medi- 
terranean culture  and  so  promised  to  become  the 
inheritor  of  all  that  man  had  learned  in  ages 
past.  But  for  nearly  twelve  centuries  the  promise 
was  not  fulfilled.  During  that  time  England  re- 
mained almost  stagnant  so  far  as  material  and 
intellectual  progress  was  concerned.  She,  like  the 
rest  of  the  world,  was  awaiting  some  great  im- 
pulse which  would  rouse  her  to  intellectual  activity. 

Here  again  Britain's  geography  stood  her  in 
good  stead.  Had  she  been  far  removed  from 
Europe  she  would  not  have  been  swept  into  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     223 

current  of  European  Interests  and  consequently  of 
European  culture.  As  it  was,  however,  England 
was,  In  the  first  place,  near  enough  to  France 
to  Invite  the  Norman  conquest  with  all  that  it 
signified, — the  introduction  not  only  of  more  ad- 
vanced forms  of  government,  literature  and  art, 
but  also  mediaeval  Christian  learning.  In  the  sec- 
ond place  England  was  near  enough  to  Spain  to  be 
brought  in  touch,  through  trade  and  travel,  with 
the  highly  developed  Arabic  culture  which  was 
being  fostered  by  the  Moors  In  the  powerful  king- 
dom of  Granada.  It  was  England's  nearness  to 
France  and  to  Spain  which  made  possible  the 
first  commingling  of  these  two  currents  of  thought, 
the  Christian  and  the  Mohammedan,  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford,  then  in  its  infancy.  It  was  this 
contact  with  European  culture  which,  from  the 
thirteenth  century  to  the  sixteenth,  poured  into 
the  English  melting-pot  all  that  humanity  had 
learned  in  the  ages  that  had  gone  before.  It 
was  this  knowledge,  confused  and  fragmentary, 
which  in  the  thirteenth  century  stimulated  Roger 
Bacon  to  see  "the  Vision  of  the  world  and  all 
the  Wonder  that  would  be"  ;  it  was  this  knowledge, 
fused  and  clarified,  which  from  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury on  enabled  Francis  Bacon  and  his  successors 


224  English  Leadership 

to  realize  that  vision  and  to  work  out  the  wonders 
of  modern  science. 

It  was  thus  England's  geography  which  brought 
to  her  the  impulse  necessary  to  waken  her  dor- 
mant intellectual  powers.  As  one  looks  back  over 
human  history  such  great  impulses  to  intellectual 
progress  seem  to  come  only  at  rare  intervals. 
Imagine  what  a  sense  of  power  must  have  thrilled 
the  hairy,  almost  brute  ancestor  of  ours  who  first 
learned  to  use  a  club !  Thousands  of  centuries 
later,  when  some  man  first  thought  of  replacing 
his  wooden  club  by  a  weapon  made  of  stone,  what 
must  have  been  the  awe  and  admiration  inspired 
in  his  fellows !  For  such  another  impulse  to 
progress  we  look  in  vain  through  several  hundreds 
of  centuries  until  one  day,  not  more  than  six 
thousand  years  ago,  some  ancient  Egyptian,  wan- 
dering in  the  neighborhood  of  Sinai  (to  use  Mr. 
Breasted's  illustration),  happened  to  bank  his  fire 
with  stones  containing  copper-ore,  and  next  morn- 
ing discovered  in  the  ashes  a  brilliant  globule  of 
pure  metal :  "Without  knowing  it,  this  man  stood 
at  the  dawning  of  a  new  era,  the  Age  of  Metal, 
and  the  little  bead  of  shining  copper  which  he 
drew  from  the  ashes,  if  this  Egyptian  wanderer 
could  have  seen  it,  might  have  reflected  to  him 
a  vision  of  steel  buildings,  Brooklyn  bridges,  huge 


English  Scientific  Thought     225 

factories  and  vast  stretches  of  steel  roads.  For 
these  things  of  our  modern  world  and  all  they 
signify  would  never  have  come  to  pass  but  for 
the  little  bead  of  metal  which  the  wandering 
Egyptian  held  in  his  hand  for  the  first  time  on 
that  eventful  day,"  six  thousand  years  ago.  Such 
an  impulse  to  constructive  thinking  made  possible 
the  development  of  that  material  civilization  with- 
out which  any  great  intellectual  growth  is  impos- 
sible. From  the  glittering  surface  of  the  copper 
globule  there  might  have  been  reflected  not  only 
the  image  of  a  material  civilization,  but  also  a 
vision  of  all  the  brilliant  discoveries  in  science  and 
invention,  made  possible  by  the  use  of  metal,  which 
have  so  immeasurably  bettered  man's  estate,  added 
to  his  intellectual  enjoyment  and  opened  to  him 
new  vistas  of  conscious  progress  toward  an  un- 
limited perfectibility. 

During  the  five  thousand  years,  however,  which 
elapsed  between  the  Egyptian  wanderer  and  the 
English  Roger  Bacon, — between  the  beginning  of 
the  Age  of  Metal  and  that  next  great  impulse 
to  intellectual  activity,  the  Renaissance, — the 
human  race  had  only  begun  to  accumulate  its 
present  vast  store  of  knowledge;  only  a  few  seeds 
of  pure  science  were  gleaned  by  the  ancient  world, 
and    even   these,    painfully    and    almost    secretly 


226  English  Leadership 

raised  by  a  few  Isolated  Greek  thinkers,  remained 
practically  unknown  to  the  people  as  a  whole. 
They  were  even  lost  to  the  world  altogether  for 
nearly  a  thousand  years  following  the  Germanic 
Invasions  which  In  the  fourth  century  disrupted 
the  whole  Roman  Empire.  But  It  was  these  very 
seeds  of  pure  science — some  unearthed  from  the 
ruins  of  ancient  libraries  or  from  mediaeval  mon- 
asteries, others  carefully  treasured  and  handed 
down  from  generation  to  generation  of  learned 
Arabs, — it  was  these  very  seeds  which,  dissemi- 
nated over  Europe  during  the  Renaissance  or 
Revival  of  Learning  from  the  thirteenth  to  the 
sixteenth  century,  were  finally  to  bear  fruit  In  the 
almost  Incredible  achievements  of  modern  science. 
In  the  meantime,  however,  up  to  the  Renais- 
sance, there  existed  in  England  only  the  four 
pseudo-sciences  popularly  known  to  the  ancient 
world, — the  mystical  astrology,  magic,  and  al- 
chemy and  a  practical  but  crude  geometry,  which 
was  nothing  more  than  the  simple  rule  o'  thumb 
methods  of  measurement  and  computation  worked 
out  by  the  ancient  Egyptians.  If  we  would  ap- 
preciate fully  the  greatness  of  the  English  con- 
tribution to  scientific  thought,  we  must  not  forget 
that  there  Is  a  radical  difference  between  what, 
on  the  one  hand,  we  moderns  call  science, — that 


English  Scientific  Thought     227 

Is,  definitely  systematized  knowledge  of  natural 
or  social  phenomena  and  of  the  relations  between 
them, — and  what,  on  the  other  hand,  the  ancients 
understood  by  the  term.  To  them  it  was  the  cloak, 
which  covered  a  multitude  of  Ideas  rooted  for  the 
most  part  in  myth  and  legend,  superstition,  magic 
and  religious  observances.  "No  study  of  Nature 
for  her  own  sake,"  as  Professor  Botsford  has 
phrased  it,  "but  only  for  practical  ends  or  from 
religious  motives — this  was  the  vital  weakness  of 
ancient  science."  All  primitive  thinking,  as  Pro- 
fessor Robinson  would  have  us  remember,  is  either 
practical,  or  mystical  and  romantic.  Mankind, 
surrounded  by  forces  and  phenomena  which  he 
could  neither  control  nor  even  understand,  sought 
to  explain  them  by  attributing  them  to  the  action 
of  beings  higher  than  himself,  beings  whom  he 
must  therefore  propitiate  If  he  would  live  in  peace 
and  harmony. 

In  modern  times  man  in  large  measure  controls 
the  external  world  by  turning  to  his  own  uses  the 
laws  of  nature  revealed  by  science;  but  the  me- 
diaeval Englishman,  like  ancient  man,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  scientific  knowledge,  resorted  to  magic, 
the  attempt  to  Influence  by  wonder-working  the 
forces  which  controlled  his  fate.  By  charms  and 
incantations,  accompanied  by  the  use  of  amulets, 


228  English  Leadership 

potions,  symbolic  herbs  and  all  sorts  of  fetishes 
from  a  lock  of  hair  to  a  toe-nail,  he  sought  to 
propitiate  the  good  and  to  ward  off  the  evil  spirits 
or  to  avert  an  unpleasant  fate,  particularly  disease 
or  death.  Some,  on  the  other  hand,  like  Faust, 
sought  to  court  the  favor  of  the  Evil  One  by  direct 
invocation,  a  practice  which  rarely  failed  to  ac- 
complish its  purpose.  One  can  understand  why 
the  mediaeval  Englishman  who  wore  a  piece  of 
chrysolite  in  his  right  ear  in  order  to  acquire  wis- 
dom, would  be  very  slow  to  realize  that  the  charm 
was  ineffectual;  but  oftentimes  either  by  sug- 
gestion or  by  hitting  upon  the  right  herb  or  drug 
the  charm  worked.  By  discarding  the  futile  and 
retaining  the  useful,  there  had  been  gradually 
built  up  a  number  of  recipes  and  "prescriptions" 
which,  developed  by  the  ancient  Greeks  and 
brought  to  England  by  Arab  and  Jewish  physi- 
cians, later  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  modern 
science  of  medicine.  But  along  with  the  practice 
of  magic  there  had  also  grown  up,  through  experi- 
ment and  observation,  and  through  concrete  in- 
vestigation into  properties,  a  considerable  body  of 
knowledg,;  r^f  natural  phenomena  which  had  given 
birth  to  other  pseudo-sciences,  particularly  astrol- 
ogy and  alchemy,  the  twin  daughters  of  magic. 
In  his  struggle  with  external  forces  ancient  man 


English  Scientific  Thought    229 

had  soon  learned  that  to  be  forewarned  is  fore- 
armed. Consequently  by  omens,  auguries,  and 
divinations,  he  sought  to  learn  the  will  of  the 
gods,  so  that  he  might  regulate  his  actions  ac- 
cordingly. Out  of  this  belief  had  grown  the 
practice  of  astrology,  or  the  forecasting  of  the 
future  of  human  beings  from  indications  given  by 
the  relative  positions  and  movements  of  the  stars, 
the  planets,  and  the  moon, — a  pseudo-science  des- 
tined in  its  turn  to  become  the  mother  of  astrono- 
my. The  fixed  stars,  grouped  in  constellations, 
formed  a  belt  about  the  earth  called  the  zodiac, 
which  was  divided  into  twelve  parts  or  "signs." 
To  each  sign  was  attached  a  certain  significance, 
favorable  or  unfavorable,  that  just  rising  at  the 
time  of  birth  being  the  dominant  one.  The  benef- 
icent or  maleficent  influence  of  the  planets,  includ- 
ing the  sun  and  moon,  was  modified  by  the  par- 
ticular sign  in  which  they  happened  to  be  at  the 
date  of  birth.  A  mediaeval  book  called  the  "Se- 
creta  Secretorum"  describes  the  brilliant  career 
of  a  weaver's  son,  who,  chancing  to  be  born  when 
Venus  and  Mars  were  in  their  most  propitious 
signs  promising  wisdom,  beauty  and  love,  rose  ac- 
cordingly, in  spite  of  most  adverse  circumstances, 
to  be  vizier  to  his  king.  The  astrologer  was  also 
consulted  for  advice  as  to  the  proper  time  for 


230  English  Leadership 

doing  any  important  business,  be  it  a  bargain  or 
marriage  or  both.  In  consequence  he  not  only 
carried  on  a  very  profitable  business  but  incident- 
ally acquired  no  inconsiderable  amount  of  real  as- 
tronomical knowledge.  This  practice,  originated 
by  the  Babylonians,  adopted  and  elaborated  by 
Greek  and  Roman,  Christian  and  Mohammedan, 
had  been  passed  on  to  England,  where  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  it  was  flourishing  in  full  force,  im- 
plicitly believed  in  by  all  classes, — by  the  learned 
as  well  as  the  ignorant,  by  a  Roger  Bacon  no  less 
than  by  the  humblest  peasant.  But  its  importance 
in  the  history  of  English  science  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  aroused  an  interest  in  astronomical  phe- 
nomena which  prepared  the  way  for  the  truly  sci- 
entific achievements  of  a  Newton  or  a  Herschel. 
In  addition  to  his  eagerness  to  know  and  to 
control  his  future,  man  has  another  very  marked 
desire,  that  of  transmuting  into  gold  or  silver 
whatever  comes  into  his  possession,  be  it  a  "Tin 
Lizzie"  or  a  leaden  Russian  bond.  On  the  basis 
of  this  universal  trait,  there  grew  up  among  the 
ancients  the  practice  of  alchemy, — in  its  narrower 
sense,  the  art  of  making  gold  or  silver  from  the 
baser  metals.  More  broadly,  it  signified  among 
the  Greeks,  at  least,  the  theory  of  the  composi- 
tion of  all  matter.     By  the  study  of  all  sorts  of 


English  Scientific  Thought     231 

substances,  and  by  the  combination  of  various 
chemical  elements,  the  mediaeval  alchemist  sought 
to  produce  genuine  gold  and  silver  coins.  When 
he  finally  became  convinced  that  this  was  impos- 
sible, he,  like  the  modern  druggist,  tried  the  ar- 
gument that  his  was  "just  as  good  or  even  bet- 
ter." Finally  when  people  refused  to  be  any 
longer  imposed  upon,  the  practice  was  forbidden, 
but  in  the  meantime  much  well-founded  knowledge 
of  chemical  substances  had  been  evolved  from  the 
alchemist's  experiments, — a  knowledge  which  was 
later  to  develop  into  the  modern  science  of  chem- 
istry. 

Such  then  was  the  so-called  science  which  ex- 
isted in  England  before  the  Renaissance, — magic, 
astrology,  alchemy,  and  simple  rules  of  measure- 
ment and  computation.  Only  by  keeping  clearly 
in  mind  the  utter  formlessness  and  chaos  of  early 
English  knowledge,  its  enslavement  to  all  sorts  of 
superstition,  prejudice  and  ignorance,  and  the  ob- 
stacles thus  placed  in  the  way  of  tru?  'science,  only 
by  keeping  all  this  clearly  in  mind  can  we  appre- 
ciate the  full  significance  of  English  achievement 
in  scientific  thought.  For  those  masses  of  con- 
fused and  unsystematized  knowledge,  either  de- 
voted to  the  merely  practical  on  the  one  hand,  or 
involved  in  mystical  and  fantastic  notions  on  the 


232  English  Leadership 

other,  lacked  the  vital  principle  of  abstract  think- 
ing, the  broad  observation,  and  orderly  arrange- 
ment which  alone  could  transform  them  into  true 
science.  No  such  result  could  be  hoped  for  so 
long  as  knowledge  was  passed  down  from  old  to 
young  on  bases  of  superstition  and  miracle,  tra- 
dition and  authority. 

Some  new  Impulse  was  needed  to  stir  the  Eng- 
lish mind  to  a  truly  Intellectual  activity.  That 
impulse  came  just  before  the  dawn  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  when  England  was  swept  Into  the 
religious  wars  or  Crusades  waged  by  the  Christian 
West  against  the  Mohammedan  East.  As  a  re- 
sult of  the  Third  Crusade,  led  by  King  Richard 
the  Lion-Hearted,  there  was  introduced  into  Eng- 
land through  Jewish  translators,  all  the  wealth  of 
Arabic  learning,  from  Spain  and  from  the  East, 
bringing  in  Its  train  those  seeds  of  pure  science 
which  had  been  produced  by  the  ancient  Greeks 
and  treasured  by  the  Arabs  for  nearly  a  thousand 
years.  Most  important  among  these  were  the 
teachings  of  Aristotle  on  natural  science,  much  dis- 
torted, however,  by  the  many  translations,  Syriac, 
Persian,  Arabic  and  Hebrew,  through  which  they 
had  passed.  The  first  effect  of  the  Introduction 
of  these  new  ideas  was  a  feverish  desire  to  recon- 
cile them  to  the  teachings  of  Christianity,  for  Aris- 


English  Scientific  Thought     233 

totle  was  of  course  a  pagan.  In  consequence  the 
translations  into  Latin  were  still  further  distorted 
by  the  numerous  omissions  and  interpolations  of 
overzealous  copyists.  But  the  scholastics  of  the 
thirteenth  century  were  so  impressed  by  the 
breadth  of  his  knowledge  and  so  overpowered  by 
his  logic,  "so  fully  convinced,"  as  Professor  Rob- 
inson phrases  it,  "that  it  had  pleased  God  to  per- 
mit Aristotle  to  say  the  last  word  upon  each  and 
every  branch  of  knowledge,  that  they  humbly  ac- 
cepted him,  along  with  the  Bible,  the  Church  fa- 
thers, and  the  Canon  and  Roman  law,  as  one  of  the 
unquestioned  authorities  which  together  formed  a 
complete  guide  for  humanity  in  conduct  and  in 
every  branch  of  science." 

Among  the  first  to  protest  against  the  fondness 
for  scholastic  logic  and  the  supreme  respect  for 
Aristotle,  was  that  first  of  English  scientists,  Roger 
Bacon,  a  Franciscan  monk  of  the  early  thirteenth 
century.  "If  I  could  have  my  way,"  he  wrote,  "I 
would  have  every  book  of  Aristotle's  burned  (the 
Latin  translations,  that  is),  because  the  study  of 
these  is  only  a  waste  of  time,  a  cause  of  error  and 
an  increase  of  ignorance."  It  was  this  same  first 
English  man  of  science  who  perceived  the  funda- 
mental weakness  of  Greek  scientific  thought, — the 
fact  that  it  was  based  upon  mere  reason  rather 


234  English  Leadership 

than  upon  reasoned  observation  and  experimenta- 
tion. Instead  of  poring  over  bad  translations  of 
Aristotle,  instead  of  relying  upon  authority  and 
tradition,  Roger  Bacon  with  true  English  inde- 
pendence advised  men  to  observe  the  common 
things  of  nature  round  about  them,  to  make  ex- 
periments, and  to  draw  their  conclusions  from 
these.  Even  though  Aristotle  was  very  wise,  Ba- 
con contended,  he  had  but  planted  the  tree  of 
knowledge  and  it  had  "not  as  yet  put  forth  all  its 
branches  nor  produced  all  its  fruits."  With  pro- 
phetic vision  this  mediaeval  Englishman  claimed 
that  science  could  do  more  for  man  than  all  the 
magic  of  the  ages,  that  some  day  it  would  enable 
men  to  fly,  to  construct  horseless  carriages,  propel 
ships  without  oars,  and  build  bridges  without  piers. 
But  this  John  the  Baptist  of  modern  English 
science,  keen  and  systematic  thinker  though  he  was, 
was  destined  to  remain  only  the  voice  of  one  crying 
in  the  wilderness  of  barren  scholastic  logic.  For 
more  than  three  hundred  years  longer  the  blind 
subservience  of  learning  to  classical  authority  and 
to  mediaeval  theology,  was  to  continue  almost  un- 
broken. Even  Roger  himself,  though  he  was  one 
of  the  first  to  break  away  from  authority,  never- 
theless still  believed  that  the  chief  service  which 
learning  could  render  was  as  handmaid  to  theol- 


English  Scientific  Thought    235 

ogy.  It  remained  for  his  more  famous  namesake, 
Francis  Bacon,  living  in  a  more  favorable  age,  to 
further  the  emancipation  of  learning  by  elaborat- 
ing, broadening  and  popularizing  the  ideas  which 
Roger  had  formulated. 

The  time  was  now  ripe  for  such  populariza- 
tion; for  conditions  in  the  early  seventeenth  cen- 
tury were  radically  different  from  those  of  the 
thirteenth.  During  those  four  hundred  years 
there  had  occurred  momentous  events  in  world 
history,  which  had  infinitely  broadened  the  Eng- 
lishman's intellectual  horizon  and  in  many  ways 
completely  changed  his  point  of  view.  During 
these  four  hundred  years  Englishmen  had  estab- 
lished on  English  soil  the  principles  of  individual 
liberty,  of  representative  government,  and  of  the 
sovereignty  of  parliament  over  the  crown;  they 
had  experienced  the  decay  of  feudalism  and  the 
abolition  of  serfdom,  the  growth  of  a  free  rural 
population  and  of  wealthy  commercial  cities.  At 
the  same  time  they  had  watched  the  gradual  fail- 
ure of  the  Holy  Wars  of  Christian  against  Mo- 
hammedan with  all  that  such  failure  signified, — 
the  downfall  of  the  policy  of  theocratic  govern- 
ment, the  overthrow  of  other-worldliness  and  the 
passing  of  the  temporal  power  of  the  Papacy;  they 
h.ad  watched,  too,  with  ever-increasing  enthusiasm 


236  English  Leadership 

the  spread  of  the  great  intellectual  awakening  re- 
sulting from  the  confronting  and  commingling  of 
Eastern  with  Western  civilization, — an  awaken- 
ing due  not  so  much  to  the  actual  exchanges  made 
as  to  the  severance  of  bonds  of  fixity,  intolerance 
and  conservatism,  the  resulting  liberation  of 
thought  and  the  stimulus  to  new  ways,  new  ideas, 
new  points  of  view.  In  consequence  of  the  intro- 
duction of  paper  in  place  of  parchment  and  of 
printing  instead  of  laborious  copying  by  hand,  these 
Englishmen,  chiefly  through  the  efforts  of  scholars 
such  as  More  and  Colet,  Grocyn  and  Linacre,  had 
by  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  very  generally 
possessed  themselves  of  the  riches  of  Greek  and 
Roman  literature.  Not  only  had  they  thus  re- 
covered what  little  of  science  the  ancients  had 
thought  out  before  the  Christian  era,  but  they  had 
acquired,  also,  many  r^ew  instruments, — the  mar- 
iner's compass  and  the  lens,  Arabic  numerals,  al- 
gebra and  Euclidian  geometry, — which  were  to 
guide  them  into  realms  of  scientific  thought  which 
even  their  heretofore  ignored  Roger  Bacon  had 
never  dreamt  of. 

Meanwhile  these  Englishmen  had  heard  with 
breathless  wonder  of  the  great  New  World  that 
lay  beyond  the  western  seas;  thrilled  by  the  dis- 
coveries of  Columbus,  Balboa,  and  Magellan,  they 


English  Scientific  Thought     237 

had  sent  out  their  own  Cabots,  Drake,  Hawkins, 
and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  and  by  the  defeat  of  the 
Spanish  Armada  had  established  supremacy  over 
the  seas.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  intellectual  fer- 
ment had  come  the  Reformation  with  its  revolt 
from  papal  authority,  the  matching  of  faith  against 
faith,  of  sect  against  sect,  of  one  form  of  intoler- 
ance against  another,  and  the  consequent  bewilder- 
ment, questioning  and  shaking  of  all  faith,  the 
breaking  away  from  traditional  moorings  and  the 
challenge  to  independent  thinking.  Such  had  been 
the  events  of  the  period  from  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury to  the  seventeenth.  Only  such  an  age  could 
have  produced  a  Francis  Bacon.  Only  such  an 
age  could  have  listened  to  his  message,  and  prof- 
ited by  his  teaching.  Only  such  an  age  could  have 
given  to  English  thought  that  confidence,  independ- 
ence, and  toleration,  that  impulse  toward  practi- 
cality and  altruism,  which  constitutes  the  lasting 
glory  of  English  achievement  in  science. 

Thus  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, the  time  was  indeed  ripe  for  the  ushering 
in  of  a  new  age,  the  beginning  of  the  age  of  mod- 
ern science.  Through  discovery  and  exploration 
of  the  external  world  of  nature,  through  travel 
and  communication  with  the  outside  world  of  men, 
England  had  come  to  reaUze  that  there  were  many 


238  English  Leadership 

things  altogether  unknown  to  the  ancients,  many 
things  in  which  they  had  even  been  in  grossest 
error.  Consequently,  in  science  as  in  all  other 
realms  of  thought,  Englishmen  were  ready  now, 
as  they  had  not  been  in  the  days  of  Roger  Bacon, 
to  break  away  from  classical  and  ecclesiastical  au- 
thority and  to  rely  upon  their  own  observation 
and  experience. 

It  was  this  new  attitude  which  found  eloquent 
expression  in  Francis  Bacon's  "Advancement  of 
Learning"  in  1605,  and  again  in  his  "Novum  Or- 
ganum,"  published  singularly  in  1620,  the  year 
in  which  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  landed  at  Plymouth. 
Like  his  predecessor,  Roger,  he  warned  his  coun- 
trymen against  the  dangers  of  submission  to  au- 
thority, particularly  that  of  Aristotle  and  the 
schoolmen.  Like  his  predecessor,  too,  he  foresaw 
the  infinite  possibilities  of  social  betterment  to  be 
attained  through  the  accumulation  of  knowledge 
about  man  and  nature  by  means  of  direct  obser- 
v^ation,  experimentation  and  research.  Only 
through  his  indispensable  preliminary  work  could 
man  arrive  at  any  sound  conclusion  as  to  the  laws 
of  the  universe  and  his  relation  to  them.  Only  so 
could  man  regain  his  power  over  nature.  "Man, 
the  servant  and  interpreter  of  nature,"  Bacon  says, 
"can  do  and  understand  so  much,  and  so  much 


English  Scientific  Thought     239 

only,  as  he  has  observed  in  fact  or  in  thought  of 
the  course  of  nature."  "First  of  all,  we  must  pre- 
pare a  natural  and  experimental  history,  sufficient 
and  good;  and  this  is  the  foundation  of  all."  But 
in  his  study  of  nature.  Bacon  reiterates,  man  must 
rely  solely  upon  observation  and  experience  as  the 
only  means  of  keeping  his  mind  free  from  preju- 
dice, error  and  preconceived  notions,  "for  God 
forbid  that  we  should  give  out  a  dream  of  our 
own  imagination  for  a  pattern  to  the  world." 

Man's  guiding  thread  out  of  the  labyrinth  of 
natural  phenomena  was  to  be  found  in  the  method, 
originated  by  Bacon,  of  reasoning  from  a  group  of 
arranged  facts,  or  observation  through  a  series  of 
eliminations,  to  an  abstract  or  generalized  truth. 
'This,  the  famous  "inductive  method,"  was,  how- 
ever, more  brilliant  than  useful;  for  neither  Bacon 
himself  nor  any  scientist  since  has  ever  arrived  at 
any  great  discovery  through  its  use.  On  the  con- 
trary the  "natural  method"  of  first  forming  an 
hypothesis  or  supposition  and  then  testing  it  by  ap- 
plication to  observed  facts  is  that  universally  fol- 
lowed. But  Bacon's  efforts  to  establish  his  method 
of  reasoning  were  not  entirely  futile,  for  it  is  only 
by  inductively  taking  into  account  facts  already 
observed  or  experienced,  that  the  scientific  imagi- 
nation can  construct  its  hypothesis,  from  which  to 


240  English  Leadership 

work  back  to  experience.  The  significance  of  Lord 
Bacon's  work  lies  not  in  the  appHcation  of  his 
method  of  reasoning,  but  rather  in  his  insistence 
upon  experimentation  and  observation  of  nature, 
instead  of  blind  reliance  upon  a  perverted  logic 
and  an  unsubstantiated  authority. 

This  Insistence  upon  the  experimental  method 
is  one  of  the  two  great  characteristics  of  Bacon 
which  entitle  him  to  recognition  as  England's  great 
leader  in  modern  scientific  thought.  The  other  is 
his  keen  perception  of  the  importance,  the  inter- 
dependence, and  the  social  aim  of  all  scientific  en- 
deavor. For  he,  too,  has  his  dream  of  an  ideal 
commonwealth,  the  New  Atlantis,  which,  could  he 
have  his  way,  would  be  organized  under  the  di- 
rection of  an  Academy  of  Sciences,  his  famous 
House  of  Solomon,  or  what  we  would  call  to-day 
a  university  of  research  endowed  by  the  state  for 
the  promotion  of  social  progress.  With  masterly 
skill  Bacon  shows  up  the  obstacles  that  lie  in  the 
path  of  human  progress, — the  ignorance  and  prej- 
udice, traditional  views  and  blind  worship  of  au- 
thority which  hold  man  slave  to  nature.  He  would 
have  man  put  aside  all  these,  and  cease  making 
knowledge  a  servant  of  theology,  which,  to  avoid 
trouble,  he  relegates  to  the  realm  of  faith;  nor 
would  he  have  man  make  knowledge  an  idealistic 


English  Scientific  Thought    241 

end  in  itself,  but  rather  a  practical  means  to  the 
end  of  social  betterment.  The  great  object  of  all 
science  is  to  recover  man's  sovereignty  over  nature, 
"to  endow  the  condition  and  life  of  man  with  new 
powers  or  works,"  "to  extend  more  widely  the  lim- 
its of  the  power  and  greatness  of  man."  "Is  there 
any  such  happiness  as  for  a  man's  mind  to  be 
raised  above  the  confusion  of  things,  where  he  may 
have  the  prospect  of  the  order  of  nature  and  er- 
ror of  man?  But  is  this  a  view  of  delight  only 
and  not  of  discovery?  of  contentment  and  not  of 
benefit?  Shall  he  not  as  well  discern  the  riches 
of  nature's  warehouse  as  the  beauty  of  her  shop? 
Is  truth  ever  barren?  Shall  he  not  be  able  thereby 
to  produce  worthy  effects,  and  to  endow  the  life 
of  man  with  infinite  commodities?"  The  whole 
spirit  of  Bacon's  attitude  toward  science  and  phi- 
losophy is  this  bent  toward  the  practical,  the  al- 
truistic, the  democratic,  and  in  this  it  is  typically 
English.  For  in  spite  of  Bacon's  nominal  support 
of  absolute  monarchy  and  aristocracy,  his  ideas 
were  essentially  democratic;  he  believed  that  not 
only  he  himself,  but  each  and  every  man,  was 
"born  to  be  of  some  advantage  to  mankind,"  and 
that,  on  the  other  hand,  mankind  must  work 
unitedly  toward  the  betterment  of  each  and  every 
man's  estate. 


242  English  Leadership 

It  Is  this  attitude  which  gives  to  Francis  Bacon 
his  unique  position  In  the  history  of  science, — he 
Is  the  first  to  formulate  the  idea  of  modern  prog- 
ress through  man's  conscious  adjustment  to  and 
scientific  control  over  the  natural  forces  of  the  uni- 
verse. "To  him,"  as  Professor  Robinson  has  said, 
"knowledge  was  above  all  dynamic  and  progres- 
sive ;  in  his  works  our  modern  Idea  of  human  prog- 
ress first  appears  In  unmistakable  form."  It  Is 
true  that  Bacon  did  not  himself  make  any  real  con- 
tribution to  scientific  knowledge  and  that  his  fear 
of  accepting  unproved  hypotheses  led  him  to  re- 
ject the  Copernlcan  theory  of  the  solar  system, — 
led  him  also  to  underestimate  and  even  disregard 
the  work  which  was  being  done  by  some  of  his 
contemporaries,  among  them  William  Gilbert's  de- 
scription of  the  fundamental  principles  of  magnet- 
ism, and  Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood;  "nevertheless,"  to  quote  Professor  Rob- 
inson again.  Bacon  and  his  Imitator,  Descartes, 
"scotched  authority,  although  they  had  not  the 
heart  to  kill  it,  and  the  unprecedented  intellectual 
clarification,  accompanied  by  an  unprecedented  ac- 
cumulation of  facts  in  regard  to  man  and  his  en- 
vironment, which  succeeding  centuries  have  wit- 
nessed, Is  largely  due  to  the  attitude  of  mind  which 
Bacon  and  Descartes  encouraged." 


English  Scientific  Thought    243 

That  this  influence  of  Francis  Bacon  on  modern 
scientific  and  philosophic  thought  was  both  imme- 
diate and  lasting  is  attested  over  and  over  again 
by  acknowledgment  on  the  part  of  later  scientists, 
French,  Italian  and  German,  as  well  as  English. 
His  insistence  upon  observation  and  collection  of 
facts  directly  from  nature  made  a  strong  appeal 
to  the  Frenchman,  Descartes,  who  in  this  delib- 
erately adopted  Bacon's  suggestion;  in  a  letter 
written  In  1632  Descartes  expressed  the  wish  that 
"some  one  would  undertake  to  give  a  history  of 
celestial  phenomena  after  the  method  of  Bacon, 
and  describe  the  sky  exactly  as  it  appears  at  pres- 
ent, without  introducing  a  single  hypothesis." 
Another  French  philosopher,  Condillac,  living  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  later  than  Bacon,  is  said 
to  have  remarked,  "No  one  knows  better  than  he 
the  cause  of  our  mistakes."  Voltaire  and  the 
French  Encyclopaedists  regarded  Bacon  as  "the 
Father  of  experimental  philosophy,"  and  d'Alem- 
bert  refers  to  him  as  "the  greatest,  the  most  uni- 
versal and  the  most  eloquent  of  philosophers." 

But  great  as  was  Bacon's  influence  on  Conti- 
nental thought,  his  greatest  service  was  rather  to 
his  own  countrymen,  and  through  them  to  the  rest 
of  the  world,  both  in  philosophy  and  In  natural 
science.     Bacon,  as  he  himself  remarked,  "rang 


244  English  Leadership 

the  bell  which  called  the  wits  together."  The  fact 
that  the  fundamental  principle  of  Locke's  "Essay 
Concerning  Human  Understanding," — that  all  our 
ideas  are  the  result  of  sensation  and  reflection, — 
is  found  briefly  stated  in  the  "Novum  Organum," 
entitles  Bacon  to  distinction  as  a  precursor  of  Eng- 
lish psychological  speculation.  In  ethics,  too,  Ba- 
con may  be  regarded  as  the  forerunner  of  all  those 
systems,  particularly  utilitarianism,  as  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  note  later  on,  which  are  based  up- 
on the  application  to  conduct  of  the  method  of  di- 
rect observation  of  human  consciousness  and  of  the 
results  of  actions.  Baconian  principles  have  thus 
undoubtedly  exercised  a  powerful  influence  upon 
the  whole  trend  of  English  thought  in  mental, 
moral  and  political  philosophy. 

But  perhaps  the  most  significant  effect  of  Ba- 
con's influence  upon  the  progress  of  natural  sci- 
ence, an  effect  due  not  to  any  contribution  of  his 
own,  nor  yet  to  his  inductive  method,  but  rather 
to  the  spirit  of  his  work,  was  the  impetus  given 
by  his  "New  Atlantis"  to  the  organization  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  London  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science,  which  took  place  in  1662, — less  than  forty 
years  after  his  death;  for  this  society,  in  its  rela- 
tion to  the  individual  on  the  one  hand  and  in  its 
service  to  the  state  on  the  other,  is,  to  some  degree 


English  Scientific  Thought    245 

at  least,  a   realization  of  Bacon's  dream  of  an 
Academy  of  Sciences. 

However  great  may  have  been  the  failure,  po- 
litically, of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  which  ran  its 
course  between  the  death  of  Bacon  and  the  found- 
ing of  the  Royal  Society,  one  permanent  gain  of 
supreme  importance  had  been  made, — the  Eng- 
lish people  as  a  whole  had  come  not  only  to  realize 
but  to  demand  their  right  to  freedom  of  thought, 
and  to  the  acquisition  of  that  knowledge  upon 
which  alone  rational  thought  can  be  based.  True 
political  freedom  can  only  follow  upon,  not  pre- 
cede, intellectual  and  spiritual  freedom.  "Give  me 
liberty  to  know,  to  utter,  and  to  argue  freely  ac- 
cording to  conscience,  above  all  other  liberties," 
Milton  had  cried  in  1643.  It  was  this  spirit  of 
Bacon  and  of  Milton,  this  spirit  of  free  inquiry, 
which  characterized  certain  meetings  held  in  Lon- 
don during  the  next  twenty  years,  of  "divers 
worthy  persons,  inquisitive  into  natural  philosophy 
and  other  parts  of  human  learning,  and  particu- 
larly of  what  hath  been  called  the  'New  Philos- 
ophy' or  'Experimental  Philosophy'  ";  and  it  was 
these  meetings  which,  largely  through  the  efforts  of 
Robert  Boyle,  a  devoted  though  unconfessed  fol- 
lower of  Bacon,  finally  resulted,  in  1662,  in  the 


246  English  Leadership 

organization  of  the  Royal  Society  of  London  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science, 

In  striving  to  realize  the  aim  of  its  founders, 
an  aim  which  has  since  grown  to  be  five-fold,  this 
society  has  performed  an  inestimable  service  for 
English  science.  At  its  inception  it  sought  to  ad- 
vance scientific  thought  by  means  of  experiments 
performed  before  the  members  at  the  meetings  of 
the  society.  Later  there  grew  up  a  library  and 
museum  for  the  preservation  of  manuscripts  and 
scientific  correspondence,  and  for  instruments  and 
models  of  historical  interest.  The  Royal  Society 
furthermore  seeks  especially  to  promote  scientific 
research  by  the  encouragement  of  all  worthy  in- 
dividual investigators,  rich  or  poor,  of  noble  rank, 
or  lowly,  English  or  foreign,  not  only  through 
channels  of  sympathy,  recognition  of  merit  and  in- 
telligent cooperation,  but  oftentimes  through  finan- 
cial assistance  as  well.  It  has  taken  the  lead  In  di- 
rection of  attention  to,  and  active  support  of  the 
government  in,  many  scientific  undertakings  of  na- 
tional importance,  such  as  the  equipment  of  the 
Royal  Observatory  at  Greenwich,  the  ventilation 
of  prisons,  protection  of  buildings  and  ships  from 
lightning,  investigation  of  earthquakes  and  vol- 
canic eruptions,  upper  atmosphere  and  deep-sea 
research,  expeditions  for  scientific  exploration  in 


English  Scientific  Thought     247 

geography,  geology  and  allied  subjects, — these  are 
only  a  few  of  its  vast  and  varied  activities  all  car- 
ried on  in  cooperation  with  the  government. 
Lastly,  what  is  perhaps  more  significant  for  the 
future  than  any  other  of  its  aims,  the  Royal  So- 
ciety has  undertaken  the  promotion  of  interna- 
tional cooperation  in  scientific  investigation,  not 
only  through  its  correspondence,  its  recognition  of 
foreign  merit,  and  its  election  of  foreigners  to 
membership,  but  also,  of  late  years,  by  taking  a 
leading  part  in  activities  connected  with  the  Inter- 
national Catalogue  of  Scientific  Literature  and 
with  the  International  Association  of  Academies 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science. 

Such  then  is  the  framework  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety, the  nearest  approach  which  England  has  yet 
made  toward  the  realization  of  Bacon's  ideal 
House  of  Solomon.  Though  in  its  organization 
it  does  not,  except  in  the  most  general  way,  ac- 
cord with  Bacon's  scheme  for  an  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, nevertheless  in  its  spirit  and  In  its  functions 
It  has  laid  the  foundation  upon  which  that  House 
may  be  erected  in  the  coming  day  when  man  will 
put  to  practical  use,  for  his  own  conscious  prog- 
ress, all  the  knowledge  of  natural  and  social  phe- 
nomena which  Is  awaiting  acquisition,  and  on  the 


248  English  Leadership 

organization  and  application  of  which  that  prog- 
ress depends. 

Up  to  very  recent  years,  however,  the  Royal 
Society  has  in  many  respects  failed  to  realize  its 
opportunity.  Though  it  has  fostered  some  of 
England's  greatest  scientific  achievement,  it  has  not 
performed  as  great  a  service  for  England  as  the 
French  Academy  has  for  France,  or  the  universi- 
ties for  Germany,  in  bringing  about  concerted  ac- 
tion and  scientific  cooperation.  Bacon's  scheme 
has  been  more  nearly  realized  in  foreign  acad- 
emies ;  scientific  discoveries  and  inventions  of  great 
importance,  such  as  Adams'  determination  of  the 
orbit  of  a  hitherto  unknown  planet,  or  Babage's 
invention  of  the  calculating  engine,  were  for  years 
left  in  neglect  by  Englishmen ;  Newton's  astronom- 
ical discoveries  were  made  known  to  the  world 
through  the  Frenchman,  Voltaire;  Locke's  school 
was  founded  in  France;  Dalton's  theories  of  chem- 
istry, Faraday's  discoveries  in  electricity,  and  Dar- 
win's theory  of  evolution  have  supplied  the  ideas 
for  German  university  courses;  English  and  Amer- 
ican inventors,  through  the  new  machinery  and 
processes  which  they  have  given  out  to  the  world, 
have  unconsciously  paved  the  way  for  German  in- 
dustrialism; and  through  the  invention  of  modern 
artillery,  aeroplane,  and  submarine,  they  have  all 


English  Scientific  Thought     249 

unwittingly  placed  in  German  hands  the  tools  of 
militarism.  Facts,  such  as  these,  have  at  last 
brought  to  the  English-speaking  peoples  a  realiza- 
tion of  their  great  mistake, — their  failure  to  carry- 
out  Bacon's  idea,  to  establish  a  real  House  of  Sol- 
omon, some  central  organization  for  the  collection 
and  correlation  of  the  work  of  individual  investi- 
gators in  widely  scattered  fields.  Only  now  are 
we  realizing  the  consequences  of  that  lack  of  the 
historical  and  encyclopaedic  spirit,  shown  by  con- 
tinental nations,  which  must  accompany  and  sup- 
plement individual  genius,  if  the  fullest  benefit  of 
thoroughness  of  research  and  completeness  of  co- 
operation are  to  be  attained. 

On  the  contrary,  in  spite  of  Lord  Bacon's  scheme 
for  organization,  English  science  has  remained, 
from  his  day  to  this,  a  series  of  brilliant  individual 
achievements  rather  than  a  corporate  effort.  But 
in  this  very  fact,  as  we  shall  see,  lies  the  peculiar 
distinction  of  the  English  contribution  to  scientific 
thought;  and  in  this  fact,  too,  lies  the  explanation 
of  its  greatness.  English  scientists  have  not  yet 
realized  Lord  Bacon's  dream  of  cooperation;  but 
they  did  adopt  and  follow  out,  each  in  his  own  in- 
dividual way,  that  experimental  method  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  was  first  suggested  to  a  dormant 
\world  by  an  Englishman,  Roger  Bacon,  in  the  thir- 


250  JEnglish  Leadership 

teenth  century,  and  four  hundred  years  later  was 
presented  in  its  full  significance  by  another  Eng- 
lishman, Francis  Bacon,  to  a  world  aroused,  ready 
to  listen,  and  eager  to  seize  upon  this  means  of 
broadening  their  intellectual  horizon. 

Even  the  most  casual  glance  over  the  three  cen- 
turies of  modern  science  which  have  elapsed  since 
Bacon's  time  is  sufficient  to  reveal  to  us  three  well- 
defined  periods  in  the  application  of  this  experi- 
mental method.  The  first,  approximately  from 
1600  to  1750,  was  distinctly  a  period  of  great  gen- 
eralizations during  which  natural  laws  of  funda- 
mental importance  were  worked  out,  particularly 
In  the  natural  sciences  of  astronomy,  physics  and 
chemistry. 

The  earliest  of  the  epoch-making  discoveries 
of  this  first  period  was  a  treatise  on  magnetism, 
published  in  1600,  by  William  Gilbert,  court- 
physician  to  Queen  Elizabeth.  Gilbert's  work,  the 
first  to  be  characterized  by  a  strict  adherence  to 
the  experimental  method,  was  likewise  the  first 
to  describe  accurately  the  phenomena  of  magnets, 
magnetized  bodies,  and  electrical  attractions;  it 
constitutes  not  merely  the  first  but  also  the  most 
important  single  contribution  ever  made  to  the  sci- 
ence of  magnetism, — that  science  so  vital  to  Eng- 
lish navigation,  commerce,   and  empire.     It  was 


English  Scientific  Thought     251 

Gilbert,  too,  who  invented  the  word  "electricity" ; 
and  it  was  his  observations  and  speculations  on 
this  subject,  supplemented  by  those  of  Boyle,  New- 
ton, and  Watson,  which  guided  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin in  1752  to  his  memorable  identification  of 
lightning  with  electricity,  and  all  the  revolutioniz- 
ing discoveries  and  inventions  which  have  followed 
in  its  wake. 

In  1 61 6,  the  year  of  Shakespeare's  death,  and 
only  eleven  years  after  the  appearance  of  Bacon's 
"Advancement  of  Learning,"  another  physician, 
William  Harvey,  brought  forward  his  discovery 
of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and  followed  it 
up  a  few  years  later  by  the  announcement  of  his 
theory  that  the  formation  of  the  embryo  takes 
place  by  the  successive  addition  of  parts  instead 
of  by  the  unfolding  of  a  miniature  complete  from 
the  beginning.  By  these  two  discoveries,  together 
with  others  of  lesser  importance.  Dr.  Harvey  not 
only  worked  a  revolution  in  the  whole  theory  of 
medicine,  but  also  won  the  distinction  of  being  the 
founder  of  the  sciences  of  anatomy  and  physiology, 
for  the  development  of  which  the  world  had  to 
wait,  however,  for  nearly  two  hundred  years 
longer.  In  that  same  memorable  year,  1616,  John 
Napier  gave  to  the  world  his  system  of  logarithms, 
a  short  method  of  multiplication  and  division  for 


252  English  Leadership 

large  numbers,  which  has  ever  since  remained  one 
of  the  foundation  stones  in  higher  mathematics. 
Within  another  fifteen  years,  Thomas  Harriot,  the 
tutor  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  gave  more  complete 
form  to  the  outlines  of  modern  algebra.  These 
two  great  achievements,  the  logarithms  of  Napier 
and  the  algebra  of  Harriot,  made  possible  thirty 
years  later  the  working  out  of  differential  calculus 
and  of  complicated  astronomical  problems  by  Sir 
Isaac  Newton. 

The  mention  of  Newton  recalls  to  us  one  of 
the  most  illustrious  names  in  the  history  of  sci- 
ence. Visitors  to  Westminster  Abbey  never  fail 
to  seek  out  a  certain  monument  which  bears  this 
inscription : 

Here  lies 

SIR  ISAAC  NEWTON,  KNIGHT, 

Who  by  vigor  of  mind,  almost  supernatural, 

First  demonstrated 

The  motions  and  figures  of  the  Planets, 

The  Paths  of  the  Comets,  and  the 

Tides  of  the  Ocean. 

He  diligently  investigated 

The  different  refrangibilities  of  the  Rays  of  Light, 

And  the  properties  of  the  Colors  to  which  they 

give  rise. 


English  Scientific  Thought     253 

An  Assiduous,  Sagacious  and  Faithful  Interpreter 

of  Nature, 

Antiquity,  and  the  Holy  Scriptures, 

He  asserted  in  his  Philosophy  the  Majesty  of  God, 

and  exhibited  in  his  Conduct  the  simplicity 

of  the  Gospel. 

Let  mortals  rejoice  that  there  has  existed 

Such   and   so   great 

AN  ORNAMENT  OF  THE  HUMAN  RACE. 

Born  25th  Dec,  1642;  Died  20th  March,  1727. 

Such  was  the  estimate  placed  upon  the  impor- 
tance of  Newton's  discoveries  by  Englishmen  of 
his  own  day.  But  during  the  years,  nearly  three 
hundred  now,  which  have  marked  the  advance  of 
science  since  his  time,  the  world  has  come  to  real- 
ize that  the  significance  of  Newton's  work  lies  not 
merely  in  the  specific  discoveries  he  made  in 
physics,  astronomy  and  mathematics,  but  more  in 
the  entirely  new  trend  which  he  gave  the  whole 
course  of  modern  thought. 

The  way  had  been  well  prepared  for  Newton 
not  only  by  the  labors  of  his  earlier  countrymen. 
Bacon,  Napier  and  Harriot,  but  also  by  those  of 
three  continental  philosophers,  Galileo,  Kepler, 
^nd  Descartes.  Even  while  Francis  Bacon  was  for- 


254  English  Leadership 

mulating  his  deductive  method,  based  upon  experi- 
mental research,  even  while  he  was  dreaming,  too, 
of  a  living  astronomy  by  which  the  physical  laws 
of  terrestrial  relations  should  be  extended  to  the 
realm  of  heavenly  bodies,  even  then  that  first  of 
great  Italian  thinkers,  Galileo  Galilei  (1564- 
1642),  was  already  opening  up  a  new  era  in  the 
history  of  descriptive  astronomy  by  his  invention 
of  the  telescope.  This  great  event  occurred  in  the 
year  1609, — the  same  year  in  which  that  intrepid 
English  sailor,  Henry  Hudson,  first  entered  New 
York  Bay  and  discovered  the  river  which  bears 
his  name.  And  just  as  Hudson's  memorable  voy- 
age was  followed  by  many  another  destined  to  es- 
tablish an  English  civilization  upon  American 
shores,  so  Galileo's  invention  of  the  telescope  was 
followed  in  bewildering  rapidity  by  one  discovery 
after  another  in  the  realm  of  science, — discoveries 
which  filled  men's  minds  with  amazement  and 
swept  aside,  as  worse  than  groundless,  fables  and 
conjectures  which  for  ages  past  had  been  accumu- 
lated regarding  the  appearance  and  the  movements 
of  stars  and  planets.  The  mediaeval  scholastics 
were  now  confronted,  in  the  system  of  Jupiter  and 
its  satellites,  by  a  visible  example  in  miniature  of 
the  truth  of  the  theory  set  forth  in  1543  by  the 
Polish  astronomer,  Copernicus, — the  theory  that 


English  Scientific  Thought     255 

the  earth  and  all  the  other  planets  revolve  about 
the  sun  as  the  center  of  our  universe.  Such  an 
example,  more  convincing  than  all  the  tomes  of 
mediaeval  logic,  marks  the  downfall  of  scholasti- 
cism, the  severance  of  bonds  of  perverted  Aris- 
totelianism,  and  the  overturning  of  mediaeval  cos- 
mogony, Galileo's  telescope  was  destined  not  only 
to  bring  within  the  range  of  man's  vision  planets 
and  stars  never  before  dreamed  of,  but  also  to 
reveal  to  the  eager  gaze  of  later  scientists  a  whole 
new  world  of  scientific  and  philosophic  thought. 

In  that  same  epochal  year,  1609,  Johann  Kep- 
ler, imperial  astronomer  and  astrologer  of  Ru- 
dolph II  of  Germany,  completed  his  "great  Mar- 
tian labor,"  as  he  himself  phrased  it,  "of  leading 
the  captive  planet  to  the  foot  of  the  imperial 
throne,"  through  the  publication  of  a  work  on  the 
orbit  of  the  planet  Mars.  In  this  and  later 
treatises  Kepler  established  his  three  great  laws  of 
planetary  motion:  that  each  planet  revolves  in  an 
elliptical  orbit  round  the  sun,  whose  center  occu- 
pies one  of  the  foci  of  the  orbit;  that  the  radius 
vector  of  each  planet,  drawn  from  the  sun,  de- 
scribes equal  areas  in  equal  times;  and  that  the 
squares  of  the  periodic  times  of  the  planets  are  In 
the  same  proportion  as  the  cubes  of  their  mean 
distances  from  the  sun. 


256  Englisli  Leadership 

By  these  three  laws  of  planetary  motion,  Kep- 
ler had  blazed  out  the  trail  which,  toward  the 
close  of  the  century,  was  to  guide  Newton  on  into 
still  greater  regions  of  undiscovered  truth.  But 
before  this  could  be  accomplished,  it  was  necessary 
that  a  bridge  should  be  built  from  ancient  to  mod- 
ern mathematics,  more  especially  geometry  and 
algebra.  That  bridge  was  begun  by  Napier 
who,  as  we  have  seen,  contributed  a  system  of 
logarithms;  the  bridge  was  extended  still  farther 
by  Harriot's  theories  and  methods  in  algebra. 
The  main  body,  however,  was  built  by  the  French- 
man Descartes  who  in  1637  published  his  "Geom- 
etry," a  work  which  for  the  first  time  correlated 
geometry  with  algebra,  established  the  principles 
of  analytical  geometry  and  made  it  possible  for 
Newton  himself  to  complete  the  mathematical 
bridge  by  his  own  invention  of  differential  cal- 
culus. Thus  had  the  way  been  prepared  for  New- 
ton's transcendent  discovery  that  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation is  applicable  throughout  the  known  universe. 

Some  vague  conception  of  the  existence  of  gravi- 
tation or  the  force  by  which  bodies  on  or  near  the 
earth's  surface  are  attracted  toward  the  center, 
was  present  in  the  minds  of  the  ancients.  Some 
speculations  had  also  been  made  in  mediaeval  times 
as  to  why  things  fall  toward  the  earth.     But  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     257 

first  important  step  toward  the  investigation  of  this 
mysterious  force  was  taken  only  when  Galileo  set 
himself  to  discover  not  why  but  how  things  fall. 
He  had  observed  that  a  ball,  starting  from  rest, 
falls  toward  the  earth's  surface  with  uniformly  in- 
creasing speed.  By  experiment  with  such  freely 
falling  bodies,  and  also  with  balls  rolling  down 
an  inclined  plane,  he  proved  mathematically  that 
if  the  speed  of  falling  Is  proportional  to  the  time 
from  the  moment  of  starting,  the  space  traversed 
must  be  proportional  to  the  square  of  the  time  of 
falling.  He  discovered  also  that  a  ball,  having 
acquired  a  certain  speed  by  rolling  down  an  in- 
clined plane,  will  roll  to  the  top  of  another  plane 
of  the  same  height,  regardless  of  Its  inclination, 
provided  that  friction  be  slight.  The  logical  con- 
clusion to  be  drawn  from  this  fact  is  that  If  the 
second  plane  be  level,  the  ball  will  keep  on  rolling 
forever,  provided  there  be  no  external  interfer- 
ence. These  observations  of  Galileo  were  first  put 
into  definite  words  by  Newton  and  constitute  what 
is  known  as  the  first  law  of  motion, — that  a  body 
to  which  motion  has  once  been  Imparted  will  con- 
tinue to  move  In  a  straight  line  at  the  same  speed, 
forever,  unless  stopped  by  some  external  force. 
Since  this  law  now  serves  as  the  foundation  of  the 
whole  science  of  dynamics,  Newton  may  justly  be 


258  English  Leadership 

regarded  as  the  founder  of  this  branch  of  modern 
physics. 

Nor  was  this  all.  Philosophers  had  hereto- 
fore believed  that  the  motion  of  the  planets  could 
be  accounted  for  only  by  the  application  of  some 
external  force;  in  this  idea  originated  the  theory 
of  vortices,  which  had  been  roughly  drafted  by 
Kepler  and  later  (1644)  set  forth  in  detail  by 
Descartes.  According  to  this  Cartesian  theory, 
as  summarized  by  William  Wallace,  the  universe 
is  infinite  and  infinitely  full  of  matter  of  uniform 
character.  This  matter  is  divided  Into  an  infinite 
variety  of  forms,  set  in  motion  by  God.  The 
movement  of  any  one  particle  in  this  closely  packed 
universe  is  possible  only  when  all  the  other  par- 
ticles move  simultaneously.  There  will  then  in- 
evitably result  throughout  the  universe  an  innu- 
merable host  of  more  or  less  circular  movements, 
and  of  vortices  or  whirlpools  of  material  particles 
varying  in  size  and  velocity.  In  consequence  of 
the  circular  movement,  the  particles  will  have  their 
corners  pared  off  by  rubbing  against  each  other. 
The  finer  matter  thus  formed,  collecting  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  vortex,  makes  up  the  sun  or  star.  The 
spherical  particles  continue  their  circulatory  mo- 
tion with  a  tendency  to  fly  off  from  the  center; 
these  make  up  the  atmosphere  which  envelops  and 


English  Scientific  Thought     259 

revolves  around  the  central  accumulation.  A  star 
may  be  caught  in  a  neighboring  vortex.  If  its  ve- 
locity Is  greater  than  that  of  the  vortex,  it  escapes 
and,  partially  broken  up,  becomes  a  comet.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  velocity  of  the  star  Is  less  than 
that  of  the  vortex  which  catches  it  up,  the  star  is 
held  by  the  vortex  and  becomes  a  planet,  revolving 
about  the  central  mass. 

Such  was  the  famous  theory  of  vortices  ad- 
vanced by  Descartes.  As  Wallace  says,  it  is  un- 
doubtedly "one  of  the  grandest  hypotheses  which 
ever  have  been  formed  to  account  by  mechanical 
processes  for  the  movements  of  the  universe."  It 
ended  the  old  Aristotelian  theory,  and  "banished 
the  spirits  and  genii  to  which  even  Kepler  had  as- 
signed the  guardianship  of  the  planetary  move- 
ments." "The  Cartesian  theory,  like  the  later 
speculations  of  Kant  and  Laplace,  proposes  to  give 
a  hypothetical  explanation  of  the  circumstances 
and  motions  which  in  the  normal  course  of  things 
led  to  the  state  of  things  required  by  the  law  of 
attraction."  But  In  many  ways  the  theory  was  in- 
adequate to  explain  known  facts.  The  true  foun- 
dation of  a  mechanical  theory  of  the  universe  was 
laid  not  by  Descartes  but  by  Kepler's  three  laws 
and  by  Galileo's  dynamics.    The  Cartesian  theory 


26o  English  Leadership 

of  vortices,  however,  unquestionably  prepared  the 
way  for  a  more  rational  mechanical  theory. 

Its  weaknesses  were  soon  perceived  by  Newton 
who,  by  the  formulation  of  the  first  law  of  motion, 
proved  the  supposition  of  vortices  false.  It  now 
became  apparent  that  it  was  not  the  continuous 
motion  of  the  planet,  but  the  deflection  of  its  mo- 
tion from  a  straight  line,  which  required  explana- 
tion. This  was  the  problem  which  Newton  now 
set  himself.  Its  solution  occupied  him  for  twenty 
years.  As  early  as  1666,  the  year  of  the  Great 
Fire  in  London,  it  had  occurred  to  him  that  the 
motion  of  the  moon  about  the  earth  might  be  de- 
termined by  the  same  law  which  governed  the  fall 
of  an  apple.  Applying  the  law  of  falling  bodies 
which  he  had  previously  worked  out,  to  the  mo- 
tion of  the  moon,  he  computed  the  amount  of  de- 
flection which  would  be  caused  by  the  force  of 
gravitation  or  the  attraction  exerted  on  the  moon 
by  the  earth.  He  found  that  his  results  did  not 
entirely  accord  with  observed  facts,  and  with  great 
disappointment  laid  his  calculations  aside.  A  few 
years  later,  a  new  determination  of  the  size  of  the 
earth  by  Picard  gave  him  new  data  for  his  prob- 
lem. With  feverish  eagerness  he  applied  himself 
again  to  the  solution,  and  in  almost  uncontrollable 
excitement  found  that  the  force  which  determines 


English  Scientific  Thought     261 

the  fall  of  an  apple  Is  the  self-same  force  which 
holds  the  moon  to  its  orbit.  His  discovery  was 
announced  to  the  world  by  the  publication,  in  1 686, 
of  his  famous  "Principia."  This  discovery  meant 
that  the  moon,  having  a  motion  of  its  own  which, 
if  unaffected  by  any  external  force,  would  make  it 
move  in  a  straight  line,  must  be  deflected  from  a 
straight-line  to  a  curvilinear  orbit  by  the  force  of 
gravitation  acting  from  the  earth.  And  if  this 
theory  could  explain  the  motion  of  the  moon  about 
the  earth,  the  same  theory  could  explain  the  move- 
ment of  the  earth  about  the  sun  and  the  move- 
ments of  all  the  other  planets.  The  force  of  this 
attraction  of  gravitation  Newton  stated  mathe- 
matically to  vary  directly  as  the  mass  of  the  bodies 
and  inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance  between 
them. 

Newton  was  not  alone  in  perceiving  the  possi- 
bility of  such  a  solution.  It  had  been  foreshad- 
owed in  the  third  law  of  Kepler;  it  had  also  been 
conceived  independently  by  three  English  friends 
of  Newton's, — Sir  Christopher  Wren,  the  archi- 
tect of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral;  Robert  Hooke,  who 
first  suggested  that  the  motion  of  heavenly  bodies 
could  be  stated  in  terms  of  mathematics,  and  Ed- 
mund Halley,  who  first  calculated  the  orbit  of  the 
1682  comet  which  now  bears  his  name.    Far  from 


262  English  Leadership 

detracting  from  Newton's  fame,  however,  these 
facts,  on  the  contrary,  add  luster  to  the  brilliance 
of  his  achievement,  for  he  alone  had  been  able  not 
only  to  recognize  the  law,  but  also  to  demonstrate 
its  validity. 

"Every  particle  of  matter  in  the  universe,"  we 
can  hear  Newton  saying  again  and  again,  "attracts 
every  other  particle  with  a  force  varying  inversely 
as  the  square  of  their  mutual  distances,  and  di- 
rectly as  the  mass  of  the  attracting  particles." 
From  this  law  he  determined  also  the  orbit  of  the 
moon  and  of  comets;  from  it  he  deduced  the  fact 
that  the  earth  is  flattened  at  the  poles;  from  it  he 
explained  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes,  the 
tides,  the  ratio  between  the  mass  of  the  moon  and 
that  of  the  earth,  between  that  of  the  sun  and  of 
the  earth.  He  also  demonstrated  that  a  spherical 
body  exerts  the  same  attraction  on  an  external 
planet  as  if  its  mass  were  concentrated  at  the  cen- 
ter; and  from  his  time  since  in  all  astronomical 
calculations,  planets,  stars,  etc.,  have  been  re- 
garded as  points  in  space.  Newton  thus  reduced 
the  phenomena  of  the  solar  system  to  a  mathe- 
matical basis  of  known  dynamic  principles. 

By  thus  stating  conclusively  in  terms  of  mathe- 
matics, not  why  but  how  the  force  of  gravitation 
acts  as  the  sole  influence  in  governing  the  move- 


English  Scientific  Thought     263 

ments  of  planets  and  satellites,  Newton  estab- 
lished the  science  of  gravitational  astronomy,  and 
demonstrated,  to  a  world  amazed,  the  possibility 
of  a  mechanical  theory  of  the  universe.  The  why 
of  it  all,  however,  the  mechanism  by  means  of 
which  the  force  of  gravitation  is  exerted,  continued 
to  remain  a  mystery  which  neither  Newton  nor 
any  other  scientist  since  his  day  has  been  able  to 
elucidate.  Nevertheless,  the  discovery  that  all  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  can  be  described 
by  one  and  the  same  simple  formula,  marks  the 
greatest,  the  most  significant,  achievement  in  the 
history  of  science. 

The  extension  of  Newton's  formula  to  explam 
the  origin  of  the  solar  system  was  accomplished 
a  hundred  years  later  by  the  astronomer  Laplace 
(1749-1827),  "the  Newton  of  France,"  who 
prophesied  for  Newton's  "Principia"  a  lasting  pre- 
eminence over  all  productions  of  the  human  in- 
tellect. 

Laplace's  "Nebular  Hypothesis,"  though  em- 
phatically only  a  speculation,  is  to-day  perhaps  the 
most  widely  accepted  theory  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  solar  system.  This  theory,  based  on  Newton's 
laws,  presupposes  a  nebulous  mass  originally  ex- 
tending throughout  the  space  now  occupied  by  our 
solar  system.     This  cloud  of  gaseous  matter  is 


264  English  Leadership 

further  presupposed  to  be  rotating  upon  its  axis. 
In  cooling  it  would  contract  toward  its  center,  thus 
accelerating  the  rate  of  rotation  and  forming  by 
increased  pressure  a  solid  mass  at  its  center  called 
the  sun.  As  contraction  continued  and  speed  of 
rotation  increased,  a  series  of  successive  rings  of 
matter  were  cast  off  by  the  shrinking  nebula.  Each 
of  these  rings,  continuing  its  movement  of  revolu- 
tion about  the  central  mass,  would  develop  a  cen- 
ter of  attraction  of  its  own  around  which  all  the 
particles  of  matter  that  made  up  the  ring  would 
gradually  accumulate  in  rotational  movement. 
Thus  from  each  ring  would  be  formed  a  solid 
mass  or  planet  having  a  movement  of  revolution 
about  the  sun  and  one  of  rotation  about  its  own 
axis. 

Such  in  barest  outline  is  the  Nebular  hypothesis 
built  up  by  Laplace  upon  the  Newtonian  law  of 
gravitation.  Unlike  the  Cartesian  theory  of  vor- 
tices which  it  has  displaced,  the  Nebular  theory 
has  not  thus  far  been  proved  inconsistent  with  any 
observed  fact.  But  as  Simon  Newcomb  has  said, 
"Should  any  one  be  skeptical  as  to  the  sufficiency 
of  these  laws  to  account  for  the  present  state  of 
things,  science  can  furnish  no  evidence  strong 
enough  to  overthrow  his  doubts  until  the  sun  shall 
be  found  growing  smaller  by  actual  measurement, 


English  Scientific  Thought     265 

or  the  nebulae  be  actually  seen  to  condense  into 
stars  and  systems." 

Newton's  name  then  stands  as  the  greatest  in 
the  history  of  science.  The  importance  of  his 
work,  though  realized  in  a  narrow  way  by  his  con- 
temporaries, was  not  recognized  in  any  broad 
sense  till  nearly  one  hundred  years  later,  when  a 
new  period  of  activity  in  pure  science  was  ushered 
in.  The  immediate  effects  of  Newton's  philosophy, 
as  we  shall  see,  were  felt  not  so  much  in  the  field 
of  natural  science,  as  in  the  realm  of  more  gen- 
eral philosophic  thought. 

Here,  too,  revolutionary  changes  were  being 
wrought,  chiefly  through  the  labors  of  Newton's 
illustrious  contemporary,  John  Locke  (1632- 
1704),  perhaps  the  greatest  of  philosophic  ex- 
ponents of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  founder  of 
the  first  continuous  school  of  English  philosophy, 
and  herald  of  modern  psychology,  the  science  of 
individual  experience. 

This  last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century  was 
an  age  peculiarly  fortunate  for  the  growth  of  a 
typically  English  school  of  philosophy.  The  air 
was  rife  with  religious  and  political  discussion. 
Catholic  was  striving  against  Protestant,  mon- 
archy against  democracy.  Divine  Right  against  a 
stern  Responsibility  to  Society.     Bacon  and  Des- 


266  English  Leadership 

cartes  had  already  "scotched  authority,"  and 
others  were  eagerly  waiting  to  strike  the  death 
blow.  Following  Bacon,  but  independently  of  him, 
Thomas  Hobbes,  in  his  "Leviathan"  ( 1 65  i ) ,  had 
already  conceived  the  idea  of  applying  the  new 
"mechanical  philosophy"  to  the  whole  constitution 
of  society  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  social  phe- 
nomena within  the  same  principles  of  scientific  ex- 
planation as  were  found  to  apply  in  the  case  of 
natural  phenomena.  By  his  rational  analysis  of 
the  moral  nature  of  man  as  actuated  by  motives 
of  self-interest  tending  continually  to  clash  one  with 
another,  Hobbes  had  given  the  first  great  Impulse 
to  that  utilitarian  school  of  ethical  speculation 
which  was  foreshadowed  In  Francis  Bacon  and 
which  has  ever  since  been  so  marked  a  character- 
istic of  English  social  science;  furthermore, 
Hobbes  had  commanded  the  respect  of  even  his 
most  violent  opponents  by  Insisting  that  the  whole 
political  system  of  a  nation  should  be  based  upon 
a  rational  regard  for  the  common  weal.  While  he 
fearlessly  attacked  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings,  he 
failed,  on  the  other  hand,  to  realize  the  need  of 
religious  toleration.  His  work  on  the  whole  rep- 
resents a  long  step  In  the  advance  of  English 
thought  toward  well-organized  social  science. 
Hobbes'  preparation  of  the  way  for  John  Locke, 


English  Scientific  Thought    267 

however,  was  not  that  of  path  finding, — Locke  was 
not  a  follower  of  Hobbes, — but  rather  that  of 
map  making;  Hobbes  charted  out  the  lay  of  the 
land,  over  which  Locke  within  the  next  fifty  years 
was  to  hew  his  own  path. 

Other  influences,  too,  were  at  work,  preparing 
the  way  for  a  new  philosophy.  Gilbert  had 
founded  the  science  of  terrestrial  magnetism ;  Har- 
vey had  established  the  beginnings  of  anatomy, 
physiology  and  medicine.  Napier,  Harriot,  Des- 
cartes and  Newton  had  evolved  a  system  of  higher 
mathematics.  Robert  Boyle  had  formulated  the 
law  of  gases  and  done  much  to  transform  alchemy 
into  chemistry.  Furthermore,  Nehemiah  Grew, 
the  earliest  vegetable  anatomist  and  physiologist, 
through  the  study  of  seed  germination  in  his 
"Anatomy  of  Plants"  (1682),  was  working  out 
the  beginnings  of  botany.  In  the  same  year  John 
Ray's  "Methodus  Plantarum  Nova"  earned  for 
him  the  title  of  Father  of  modern  zoology.  Hal- 
ley  was  soon  to  make  the  first  calculation  ever  at- 
tempted of  the  orbit  of  a  comet.  And  Galileo, 
Kepler,  Descartes  and  Newton  had  created  not 
only  a  new  astronomy  but  also  a  whole  new  me- 
chanical theory  of  the  universe. 

In  the  meantime  the  Royal  Society  had  been 
founded  and  experiment  in  physics  had  become  the 


268  English  Leadership 

fashion.  Scientific  knowledge  was  being  rapidly 
diffused  through  a  new  custom  of  popular  lectures. 
Aristotelianism  had  been  dethroned  and  mediaeval 
scholasticism  at  last  put  to  rout.  Freedom  of  the 
press  was  being  gradually  obtained  and  freedom 
of  thought  being  demanded  more  and  more  insist- 
ently. And  finally  the  Glorious  Revolution  had 
established  the  sovereignty  of  parliament  over  the 
crown,  marked  the  triumph  of  the  Commons  over 
the  Lords,  and  saw  the  ancient  rights  and  liberties 
of  Englishmen  guaranteed  by  the  passage  of  the 
Bill  of  Rights. 

Under  conditions  such  as  these  it  was  inevitable 
that  a  school  of  philosophy  typically  English 
should  arise.  It  is  inconceivable,  too,  that  an  Eng- 
lish thinker  living  in  such  stirring  times  could  ab- 
stract himself  from  the  social,  political  and  re- 
ligious problems  of  his  time.  It  was  only  to  be 
expected  then  that  John  Locke  would  set  himself 
in  truly  English  fashion  to  work  out  practical  so- 
lutions for  the  problems  immediately  before  him. 
The  two  which  appealed  to  him  as  most  pressing 
were,  on  the  one  hand,  the  question  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty,  and,  on  the  other,  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  mental  phenomena  and  their  rela- 
tion to  the  validity  of  knowledge.  To  the  solu- 
tion of  these  two  problems  he  devoted  his  whole 


English  Scientific  Thought     269 

life.  The  results  of  his  labors  are  embodied  for 
the  most  part  in  his  "Letters  on  Toleration"  and 
in  his  "Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding." 

Locke's  early  inclination  toward  politics  had 
won  for  him  the  position  of  confidential  secretary 
to  the  first  Earl  of  Shaftesbury;  between  these  two 
there  developed  an  inspiring  and  lasting  friend- 
ship based  upon  their  common  desire  to  advance 
the  cause  of  liberty, — civil,  religious  and  philo- 
sophical. Even  in  the  earliest  of  Locke's  essays, 
the  bent  of  his  mind  is  clearly  apparent;  for  in 
these  he  set  forth  objections  to  the  sacerdotal  con- 
ception of  Christianity,  and  made  short  work  of 
ecclesiastical  claims  to  infallibility  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Scriptures.  In  one  of  these  earlier 
essays  he  also  formulated  a  system  of  utilitarian 
ethics  much  more  comprehensive  than  that  of 
Hobbes.  According  to  Locke's  teaching,  the  dis- 
tinction between  right  and  wrong  was  dependent 
upon  the  results  of  actions  in  bringing  about  hap- 
piness or  unhappiness.  On  these  grounds  later  on 
he  defended  the  principles  of  democracy  and  of 
constitutional  law.  His  whole  system  of  ethics, 
founded  thus  upon  experience,  is  another  milestone 
in  the  development  of  English  rationalism. 

The  culmination  of  Locke's  thought,  however, 
on  the  value  of  experience  is  to  be  found  in  his 


270  English  Leadership 

"Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding."  The 
importance  of  the  "Essay"  in  English  philosophic 
thought  is  due  not  to  any  valuable  contribution 
made  by  Locke  himself,  but  rather  to  the  fact  that 
it  formed  the  starting  point  from  which  all  later 
thought  developed.  It  is  this  fact  which  marks 
John  Locke  as  the  founder  of  the  first  continuous 
school  of  English  philosophy.  It  was  left  for  his 
successors,  particularly  Bishop  Berkeley  and 
David  Hume,  to  work  out  the  details  of  the  sys- 
tem. 

Whatever  may  be  the  world's  estimate  as  to  the 
value  of  the  English  school  of  philosophy,  there 
can  be  no  question  that  the  "Essay"  constitutes 
one  of  England's  greatest  contributions  to  purely 
scientific  thought,  for  in  It  are  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  modern  psychology,  Descartes  a  few 
years  before  had  announced  a  theory  of  "innate 
ideas,"  that  is,  that  the  mind  Is  in  possession  of 
certain  principles  of  knowledge  prior  to  experi- 
ence; but,  as  William  Wallace  has  said,  "Des- 
cartes's  dubious  phraseology  anent  Innate  ideas, 
found  a  witty  executioner  In  Locke."  According 
to  Locke's  theory  the  mind  acquires  knowledge 
only  through  experience,  or,  in  other  words, 
through  sense-impressions  received  from  the  ex- 
ternal world,  and  through  the  internal  process  of 


English  Scientific  Thought    271 

reflection.  Each  Individual's  knowledge  conse- 
quently is  limited  and  determined  by  his  experi- 
ences. Since  the  experiences  of  no  two  people  are 
exactly  the  same,  it  becomes  evident  that  no  two 
people  will  see  the  outside  world  from  exactly  the 
same  point  of  view.  Out  of  this  belief  grew 
Locke's  theory  of  tolerance.  In  this  conception 
of  experience  as  the  sole  source  of  knowledge, 
Locke  prepared  the  way  for  psychology,  the  sci- 
ence of  individual  experience. 

Without  going  into  a  discussion  involving  highly 
technical  phraseology,  it  is  easily  evident  that  this 
new  theory  of  Locke's  as  to  the  origin  of  knowl- 
edge would  lead  Inevitably  to  his  theory  of  toler- 
ance. While  his  "Letters  on  Toleration"  are  pri- 
marily pamphlets  in  support  of  free  religious  as- 
sociations outside  of  the  established  church,  there 
can  nevertheless  be  deduced  from  them  a  thor- 
oughgoing argument  for  intellectual  freedom  in 
general.  Locke's  theory  of  knowledge  on  the  one 
hand  and  his  theory  of  tolerance  on  the  other  are 
striking  illustrations  of  the  growing  tendency  to 
exalt  reason  at  the  expense  of  authority.  The  su- 
premacy of  reason  and  experience  over  faith  and 
authority  was  so  firmly  established  by  Locke,  that 
through  all  the  theological  warfare  that  followed 
between  church  and  state,  between  science  and  re- 


272  English  Leadership 

ligion,  the  theologians  themselves  relied  upon  rea- 
son rather  than  upon  revelation.  They,  too,  were 
becoming  convinced  of  the  truth  of  Locke's  terse 
statement:  "He  that  takes  away  reason  to  make 
room  for  revelation  puts  out  the  light  of  both ;  and 
does  jnuch  the  same  as  if  he  would  persuade  a 
man  to  put  out  his  eyes,  the  better  to  receive  the 
remote  light  of  an  invisible  star  by  a  telescope." 

In  the  words  of  Alexander  Fraser,  Locke's 
"repugnance  to  believe  blindly  what  rested  on  ar- 
bitrary authority,  as  distinguished  from  what  was 
seen  to  be  sustained  by  self-evident  reason,  or  by 
demonstration,  or  by  good  probable  evidence,  runs 
through  his  life.  He  is  typically  English  in  his 
reverence  for  facts,  whether  facts  of  sense  or  of 
living  consciousness,  in  his  aversion  from  abstract 
speculation  and  verbal  reasoning.  In  his  suspicion 
of  mysticism,  in  his  calm  reasonableness,  and  in 
his  ready  submission  to  truth.  .  .  .  Locke  is  apt 
to  be  forgotten  now,  because  in  his  own  generation 
he  so  well  discharged  the  intellectual  mission  of 
initiating  criticism  of  human  knowledge,  and  of  dif- 
fusing the  spirit  of  free  inquiry  and  universal  tol- 
eration which  has  since  profoundly  affected  the 
civilized  world.  He  has  not  bequeathed  an  im- 
posing system,  hardly  even  a  striking  discovery  in 
metaphysics,  but  he  is  a  signal  example,  in  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     273 

Anglo-Saxon  world,  of  the  love  of  attainable  truth 
for  the  sake  of  truth  and  goodness.  'If  Locke 
made  few  discoveries,  Socrates  made  none.'  But 
both  are  memorable  in  the  record  of  human  prog- 
ress." 

Only  a  few  years  after  Locke's  death  in  1704, 
George  Berkeley,  later  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  took  up 
the  work  which  his  master  had  left,  and  developed 
his  famous  theory  of  vision  which  even  now  stands 
the  test  of  rigid  investigation,  leaving  him  still 
the  great  discoverer  in  the  psychology  of  vision. 
From  psychological  preliminaries,  Berkeley  went 
on  to  develop  his  metaphysical  doctrine  of  Ideal- 
ism and  so  established  on  a  permanent  basis  the 
distinctly  English  school  of  philosophy  founded  by 
Locke.  This  school,  as  we  shall  see,  was  to  come 
into  much  greater  prominence  in  the  nineteenth 
century  warfare  between  science  and  religion. 

It  was  in  France,  however,  rather  than  in  Eng- 
land, that  the  ideas  of  Newton  and  of  Locke  were 
first  made  the  basis  of  definite  schools  of  thought. 
Voltaire,  during  his  famous  sojourn  in  England 
from  1726  to  1729,  had  been  very  deeply  im- 
pressed by  the  broad  tolerance  which  characterized 
English  thought  and  by  the  great  achievements  of 
the  English  in  science  and  philosophy.  Voltaire's 
return  to  France  marks  the  introduction  of  both 


274  English  Leadership 

Newton  and  Locke  to  continental  schools  of 
thought.  Newtonian  physics  soon  after  displaced 
Cartesian  philosophy  and  became,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  basis  upon  which  Laplace  built  his  Nebular 
hypothesis;  Locke's  speculations  on  mental  phe- 
nomena were  elaborated  and  erected  into  the  sci- 
ence of  psychology  by  Condillac  (1715-1780)  and 
his  followers,  whence  it  later  found  its  way  back 
to  England. 

Thus  the  marvelous  advance  of  pure  science  in 
England  during  the  seventeenth  century  was  al- 
ready, in  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth,  making 
a  most  profound  Impression  upon  all  European 
thought,  social,  religious,  and  philosophical.  Per- 
haps the  most  striking  effect  of  all  was  the  impetus 
given  by  Newtonian  physics  to  the  development 
of  the  school  of  English  Deists,  which  had  been 
founded  by  Herbert  of  Cherbury  as  early  as  1645. 
They  sought  to  do  away  with  all  revealed  religion 
with  all  Its  dogma  and  Its  ritual,  to  establish  a 
rationalistic  criticism  of  biblical  documents,  and  to 
worship  God  as  the  manifestation  of  immutable 
law.  The  Deist  movement  soon  died  out,  but  not 
until  It  had  produced  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  and 
wrought  far-reaching  changes  in  the  views  of  the 
French  Encyclopaedists  and  in  German  biblical 
criticism. 


English  Scientific  Thought     275 

The  achievements  of  Newton,  Locke  and  their 
immediate  followers  mark  the  close  of  the  first 
great  period  in  the  development  of  English  scien- 
tific thought.  It  was,  as  we  have  seen,  a  period  of 
beginnings  during  which  through  an  amazing  series 
of  brilliant  individual  achievements,  a  few  great 
English  thinkers  had  laid  the  foundations  of  mod- 
ern astronomy,  physics,  and  higher  mathematics, 
botany  and  zoology,  anatomy,  physiology  and  med- 
icine, psychology,  and  ethics.  All  this  had  been 
accomplished  in  a  period  of  less  than  one  hundred 
fifty  years  since  Bacon's  "Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing." This  sudden  and  immense  enlargement  of 
man's  intellectual  horizon  had  been  brought  about 
through  the  application  of  Bacon's  experimental 
method, — a  minute  observation  of  natural  phe- 
nomena aided  by  suitable  instruments  and  verified 
by  experimentation.  In  all  the  ages  of  past  civ- 
ilization nothing  had  been  accomplished  in  any 
way  comparable  to  the  advance  of  this  first  period 
of  English  science. 

There  has  been  a  general  notion,  even  among 
the  best  informed  people,  that  the  Greeks  had  en- 
gaged in  practically  all  the  forms  of  intellectual 
activity  with  which  we  are  now  familiar;  that  they 
had  forecast  nearly  all  of  our  fundamental  dis- 
coveries in  science ;  that  their  achievements  of  the 


276  English  Leadership 

Intellect  were  equal,  if  not  superior,  to  anything 
which  man  has  since  accomplished.  But  telescopes, 
microscopes,  and  all  the  other  instruments  of  the 
modern  scientist  were  unknown  to  the  ancient 
Greeks.  Their  knowledge  at  the  best  was  only  a 
crude  and  haphazard  observation  unsupported  by 
experimentation.  By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  our  knowledge  in  all  the  branches  of  mod- 
ern science,  as  Professor  Robinson  says,  "greatly 
transcended,  in  its  extent  and  precis^ion,  anything 
known  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  The  diabolical 
superstitions  associated  with  witchcraft .  .  .  finally 
gave  way,  and  the  new  spirit  of  unfettered  criti- 
cism and  the  confidence  in  experimental  science  and 
its  applications  which  it  had  begotten — which  were 
ever  reenforcing  the  conception  of  progress  and 
were  ever  weakening  the  authority  of  the  past — 
furnished  the  necessaiy  preliminaries  for  a  new 
series  of  achievements." 

The  second  period,  a  comparatively  short  one, 
in  the  history  of  English  thought  was,  by  the  very 
nature  of  its  extent  from  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  to  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth, 
characterized  by  an  entirely  different  type  of  scien- 
tific activity.  The  advance  of  pure  science,  depen- 
dent as  it  is  upon  unfettered  criticism  and  freedom 
of  thought,  had  now  to  await  further  steps  in  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     277 

general  trend  of  English  experience  before  It  could 
enter  upon  another  great  period  of  generalization. 
For  the  next  half  century  the  English  Intellect  was 
occupied,  not  by  the  formulation  of  new  theories 
of  natural  science,  but  rather  with  the  application 
to  practical  life  of  those  already  formulated.  It 
constituted,  therefore,  the  middle  or  transitional 
period  in  the  growth  of  English  scientific  thought. 
But  this  does  not  mean  that  It  is  any  less  significant. 
The  least  active  Is  often  the  most  vital;  the  least 
sensational,  often  the  most  dramatic.  So  It  was 
with  this  half  century  of  transition. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  period,  in  the  early 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  England  was  on 
the  verge  of  momentous  changes  in  her  social,  in- 
dustrial and  economic  life, — changes  that  were 
destined  to  transfigure  completely  the  face  of  all 
later  civilization.  On  the  one  hand  they  were  to 
lead,  through  the  practical  application  of  scien- 
tific principles,  to  a  series  of  epoch-making  in- 
ventions which  would  revolutionize  Industry;  on 
the  other  hand  they  were  to  bring  forth  the  first 
great  formulation  of  the  principles  of  economic 
science. 

In  consequence  of  the  greater  liberty  of  Indi- 
vidual action  and  broader  tolerance  of  belief, 
which  had  been  achieved  through  the   Glorious 


278  English  Leadership 

Revolution  of  1688-89,  England  had  become  the 
asylum  of  oppressed  peoples  of  the  Continent, 
where  freedom  was  as  yet  a  thing  unknown.  Par- 
ticularly was  this  true  of  France.  In  1685,  the 
Edict  of  Nantes,  which  had  guaranteed  protec- 
tion to  French  Protestants,  had  been  revoked,  and 
thousands  of  Huguenots,  mainly  silk  weavers, 
took  refuge  in  Protestant  England.  This  great 
tide  of  immigration  had  a  profound  effect  on 
English  industry.  The  stimulus  to  the  silk  trade 
was  immediate  and  lasting.  Slowly  but  surely 
trade  secrets  leaked  out  and  English  workmen 
learned  to  copy  French  methods.  But  the  Eng- 
lish artisan  could  not  equal  the  French  artist,  and 
the  fashion  for  French  goods  remained,  so  much 
so  that  materials  not  bearing  the  label,  "French 
made,"  were  sold  with  difficulty.  This  new  stimu- 
lus to  industry  was  felt,  too,  not  only  in  silk  weav- 
ing but  in  all  the  other  industries  brought  over 
by  the  immigrants, — weaving  of  linen  and  of  sail 
cloth,  printing  of  calico  and  other  cotton  goods, 
making  of  hats,  paper,  glass  and  pottery,  tapestry 
and  furniture.  The  new  trades  took  root  very 
quickly  and  grew  with  astonishing  rapidity,  until 
Fngland  became  a  veritable  beehive  of  domestic 
industry. 

This  tremendous  increase  in  industrial  activity 


English  Scientific  Thought    279 

was,  of  course,  in  answer  to  a  corresponding  in- 
crease in  demand,  to  be  explained  partly  by  the 
greater  skill  and  taste  of  the  newcomers,  but  much 
more  by  the  fact  that  this  period  of  immigration 
was  coincident  with  a  period  of  increased  com- 
munication with  the  Continent,  due  mainly  to  po- 
litical causes,  which  brought  in  its  train  a  new 
fashion  for  things  continental.  If  the  French- 
man of  the  eighteenth  century  followed  the  Eng- 
lish lead  in  science  and  philosophy,  the  English- 
man on  the  other  hand,  followed  the  French  in 
customs  and  manners,  dress,  art  and  literature. 
This,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  the  age  of 
Queen  Anne,  and  of  the  Georges,  the  age  of  the 
coffee  house,  the  essay  and  the  beginnings  of  pe- 
riodical literature,  the  age  of  Pope  and  of  John- 
son, the  age  when  form  and  ceremony,  dress  and 
outward  adornment,  luxury  and  ease,  were  the 
highest  ideals  of  a  very  considerable  portion  of 
a  wealthy  and  prosperous  population.  Small  won- 
der that  English  industry  advanced  by  leaps  and 
bounds,  and  that  her  products,  protected  by  rigid 
navigation  laws,  soon  found  their  way  to  all  parts 
of  the  civilized  world, — carried  to  England's  rap- 
idly growing  colonial  empire,  carried  moreover 
in  English  ships  manned  by  English  sailors,  and 
controlled  by  English   merchants,   whose   profits 


28o  English  Leadership 

fast  came  to  constitute  the  greatest  source  of  the 
nation's  wealth. 

But  before  attempting  to  seek  out  the  economic 
causes  underlying  this  tremendous  increase  in 
manufacture  and  domestic  industry,  more  espe- 
cially in  cloth  making,  we  must  be  careful  to  re- 
mind ourselves  that  these  words  did  not  mean  in 
those  days  what  they  mean  to  us  to-day.  "Manu- 
facture" was  still  used  by  the  eighteenth-century 
Englishman  exactly  as  it  had  been  by  the  ancient 
Roman,  in  its  literal  sense,  "made  by  hand."  The 
old  spinning-wheel,  which  could  produce  but  a  sin- 
gle thread,  the  simple  hand-loom,  and  all  the  tools 
used  were  of  the  same  primitive  type  as  those 
which  had  done  service  fifteen  centuries  before  in 
Roman  Britain.  "Domestic  industry"  meant  not 
that  within  the  boundaries  of  a  nation,  but  liter- 
ally a  trade  carried  un  within  the  home.  Each 
weaver's  cottage  was  a  separate  and  self-sufficing 
unit  where  the  women  and  children  of  the  family 
did  the  spinning,  while  the  men  were  occupied  in 
weaving  and  in  tilling  the  little  plot  of  ground, 
whose  products  supplied  the  family  with  food. 
These  cottages,  it  must  also  be  remembered,  were 
for  the  most  part  rural,  not  urban.  The  ancient 
craft-guilds  which  all  through  mediaeval  times  had 
practically  controlled  the  various  trades,  were  at- 


English  Scientific  Thought    281 

tempting  to  maintain  their  old-time  monopoly  by 
a  rigid  policy  of  exclusion,  which  prevented  any 
considerable  development  of  these  new  industries 
in  the  towns,  within  whose  boundaries  their  juris- 
diction was  protected  by  royal  charter.  Fortu- 
nately under  the  primitive  system  then  prevailing 
the  new  trades  could  be  carried  on  as  easily  in 
rural  districts  as  in  urban,  for  the  processes  of 
manufacture  were  of  the  simplest,  involving  no 
use  of  costly  machines,  necessitating  no  interde- 
pendence of  labor  beyond  that  which  the  family 
itself  could  supply. 

Methods  of  exchange  were  equally  undeveloped. 
The  northern  districts,  which  during  the  eight- 
eenth century  were  still  largely  pastoral,  pro- 
duced by  far  the  greater  part  of  raw  wool;  and 
here  relations  between  the  wool-raiser  and  the 
weaver  were  of  the  simplest, — the  weaver  bought 
the  raw  wool  direct  from  the  producer  and  sold 
the  cloth  he  made  directly  to  the  consumer.  In 
the  southern  districts,  where  materials  were  im- 
ported, the  supply  was  controlled  by  "merchant 
manufacturers,"  who,  instead  of  selling  the  raw 
material  to  the  weaver,  merely  intrusted  it  to  him 
for  making  into  cloth  which  when  finished  was  re- 
turned to  the  merchant.  Such  a  system  of  manu- 
facture and  exchange  undoubtedly  had  its  advan- 


282  English  Leadership 

tages;  but  there  was  fast  approaching  a  time  when 
It  could  no  longer  supply  the  demand.  It  is  only 
by  keeping  in  mind,  however,  this  primitive  char- 
acter of  English  industry  during  the  eighteenth 
century  that  we  can  appreciate  fully  the  revolu- 
tion wrought  by  the  introduction  of  machinery  and 
of  modern  industrial  processes. 

This  tremendous  social  and  economic  change, 
the  earliest  stages  of  which  we  now  call  the  In- 
dustrial Revolution,  took  place  in  the  last  quar- 
ter of  the  eighteenth  century.  Its  causes  and  the 
reasons  why  it  came  first  in  England  rather  than 
on  the  Continent  are  many,  varied,  and  highly- 
complex.  There  were,  however,  as  Professor 
Ogg  has  pointed  out,  several  obviously  favoring 
conditions, — the  greater  abundance  in  England 
both  of  skilled  labor  and  of  capital,  the  gradual 
passing  of  the  control  of  domestic  industry  into 
the  hands  of  merchant-manufacturers,  and  the 
early  and  rapid  progress  of  mechanical  inven- 
tion. In  England  many  favouring  circumstances, 
both  geographic  and  historical,  had  opened  the 
door  to  wider  opportunities  and  greater  rewards 
than  in  any  other  nation  of  Europe.  England's 
early  overthrow  of  the  feudal  system,  the  growth 
of  enclosures,  and  her  extraordinary  accessibility 
to  the  sea  had  already  brought  the  woolen  indus- 


English  Scientific  Thought     283 

try  largely  under  the  control  of  merchant-manu- 
facturers, particularly  in  southwestern  England. 

But  English  industry  could  not  come  Into  Its 
own  till  the  domestic  system  could  be  replaced  by 
the  factory,  when  all  the  materials  could  be  kept 
under  one  roof,  and  all  the  laborers  work  together 
In  one  place.  Only  so  could  specialization  of  la- 
bor develop,  only  so  could  efficiency  be  realized. 
To  bring  about  this  result,  one  more  factor  was 
obviously  necessary, — the  improvement  and  In- 
creased utilization  of  machinery.  It  was  just  here 
that  English  science  came  to  the  rescue  of  English 
Industry. 

Of  all  the  processes  In  cloth  making,  that  of 
spinning  had  always  been  the  slowest;  anywhere 
from  five  to  ten  spinners  were  required  to  keep 
one  weaver  busy.  This  disproportion  became 
still  more  perplexing  when  In  1738,  John  Kay  of 
Lancashire  invented  the  "flying  shuttle,"  which  en- 
abled one  man  to  do  the  work  of  two  and  at  the 
same  time  double  the  productive  capacity  of  the 
loom.  The  demand  on  the  spinner,  which  now 
became  greater  than  ever,  finally  in  1761  led  the 
Royal  Society  for  the  Encouragement  of  Arts  and 
Manufactures  to  offer  two  prizes  for  the  in- 
vention of  a  spinning  machine  which  could  pro- 
duce more  than  one  thread  at  a  time, 


284  English  Leadership 

English  practicality  came  at  once  to  the  fore 
In  a  wonder-working  series  of  Improvements. 
The  earliest  of  these  was  the  "spinning-jenny," 
Invented  in  1764  by  a  Lancashire  weaver,  James 
Hargreaves.  This  machine,  which  could  be  oper- 
ated by  a  child,  at  first  produced  eight  and  later 
eighty  threads,  but  these  threads,  lacking  firm- 
ness, could  be  used  only  for  woof.  Seven  years 
later  Richard  Arkwright,  a  peddler,  put  together 
his  "water-frame,"  whose  firm  thread,  substi- 
tuted for  the  linen  formerly  used  as  warp,  now 
enabled  weavers  for  the  first  time  to  produce  all- 
cotton  cloth.  This  fact  alone  would  mark  it  as 
an  epoch-making  Invention;  but  its  importance  Is 
still  further  Increased  by  the  fact  that  its  cum- 
brous mechanism  and  dependence  upon  water 
power,  making  its  use  in  the  domestic  system  im- 
possible, gave  a  powerful  impetus  to  the  growth 
of  the  factory  system.  A  few  years  later  Sam- 
uel Crompton,  also  of  Lancashire,  combined  the 
merits  of  the  "jenny"  and  the  "water-frame"  In 
a  machine  called  the  "mule,"  which  has  served  as 
the  basis  for  all  modern  weaving  machinery. 
Crompton's  "mule"  made  possible  the  spinning 
of  a  very  fine  soft  thread,  and  thus  led  to  the  es- 
tablishment In  England  of  the  manufacture  of 
muslin.     By  his  Invention  the  productivity  of  the 


English  Scientific  Thought    285 

spinners  was  so  increased  that  the  burden  of  de- 
mand shifted  now  to  the  producers  of  raw  cotton. 

Up  to  this  time  cotton  fiber  had  been  sepa- 
rated from  the  seeds  by  hand;  but  in  1792  Eli 
Whitney's  cotton  gin,  which  enabled  one  man  to 
do  the  work  of  ten,  opened  to  the  English  spin- 
ners all  the  great  resources  of  the  American  cot- 
ton fields.  This  in  turn  shifted  the  demand  to 
the  shoulders  of  the  weavers.  In  1784  Cart- 
wright,  a  clergyman  of  Kent,  had  conceived  the 
idea  of  a  power-loom;  but  due  to  the  unsatisfac- 
tory conditions  of  water  power  the  machine  did 
not  come  into  general  use  until  the  early  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  when  the  difficulty  was  re- 
moved by  the  application  of  steam  power.  Thus, 
by  a  series  of  three  great  inventions,  the  cotton 
gin,  the  spinning  machine  and  the  loom,  the  tex- 
tile industry  was  carried  from  the  cottage  to  the 
factory;  cloth  was  no  longer  man-made,  but  ma- 
chine-made. Thus  in  a  brief  period  of  fifty  years 
had  England  introduced  and  established  the  first 
great  principle  of  modern  industrialism,  the  use 
of  machinery. 

The  second  great  element  in  industrialism  is 
that  of  power.  Ever  since  the  time  of  the  an- 
cients, the  expansive  power  of  steam  had  been 
known,  but  this  knowledge  had  not  been  put  to 


286  English  Leadership 

practical  use  until  1705  when  the  need  of  some 
means  of  pumping  water  from  mines  led  the  Eng- 
lishman Newcomen,  through  the  introduction  of 
the  principle  of  the  piston  and  cylinder,  to  the 
invention  of  a  crude  steam  engine.  But  New- 
comen's  engine  which  made  use  of  steam  only  at 
one  end  of  the  piston  was  of  very  low  efficiency; 
it  remained  for  another  Englishman,  James 
Watt,  sixty  years  later,  to  make  the  engine  of 
practical  use  in  industry  by  closing  the  cylinder 
and  applying  steam  at  both  ends  to  increase  ef- 
ficiency; by  introducing  a  separate  condenser  to 
avoid  cooling  the  cylinder;  a  "governor"  of  re- 
volving balls  to  secure  regularity  of  motion;  and 
a  rod  and  crank  arrangement  which  made  pos- 
sible the  use  of  a  belt  to  drive  other  machinery. 
It  was  these  improvements  made  by  Watt  which 
first  made  possible  the  use  of  the  steam-engine  in 
the  operation  of  machinery.  From  1785  when 
it  was  first  used  to  run  a  spinning  machine,  it  was 
rapidly  introduced  wherever  factories  sprang  up 
in  all  the  newly  born  industrial  centers  of  north- 
ern England.  Watt's  engine,  therefore,  marks 
the  establishment  of  the  second  great  principle 
of  modern  industrialism,  the  use  of  mechanical 
power  to  economize  man  power. 

But  in  order  that  these  two  great  principles  of 


English  Scientific  Thought     287 

the  Industrial  Revolution,  the  invention  of  ma- 
chinery for  the  multiplication  of  human  efficiency 
and  the  perfecting  of  engines  for  the  application 
of  steam  power,  might  be  worked  out,  two  other 
fundamental  elements  were  necessary, — an  abun- 
dant supply  of  material  for  the  manufacture  of 
machinery  and  an  equally  abundant  supply  of  fuel 
for  the  generation  of  power.  Machinery  can- 
not be  made  without  metal  nor  can  steam  be  pro- 
duced without  fuel.  Fortunately  large  areas  in 
northern,  central  and  western  England  are  under- 
laid with  invaluable  deposits  of  coal  and  iron  ore; 
but  it  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  that  proper  methods  of  utilizing  these  re- 
sources were  discovered. 

In  ancient  and  mediaeval  times  ore  had  been 
melted  by  the  use  of  charcoal,  but  this  was  a  very 
expensive  process,  in  the  first  place  because  by 
this  means  the  full  amount  of  pure  iron  could  not 
be  obtained  from  the  ore;  and  in  the  second  place 
because  great  quantities  of  charcoal  were  required 
for  every  ton  of  iron.  Under  such  circum- 
stances it  was  only  natural  that  sooner  or  later 
measures  would  be  taken  to  prevent  the  deforesta- 
tion of  England  and  in  the  end  seriously  cripple 
her  iron  trade.  By  1750,  in  fact,  export  had 
practically  ceased  and  Swedish  pig  iron  was  being 


288  English  Leadership 

imported  in  ever  increasing  quantities.  It  was 
necessary  that  some  new  method  of  smelting  be 
evolved.  Early  in  the  seventeenth  century  at- 
tempts had  been  made  to  utilize  coal  for  this  pur- 
pose; but  not  till  the  middle  of  the  century  was 
any  degree  of  success  attained.  Through  experi- 
ments made  by  Dud  Dudley  and  Abraham  Darby 
a  process  of  smelting  by  coke  was  developed,  but 
the  product  obtained  did  not  possess  the  desired 
malleability.  Shortly  afterward  Smeaton  in- 
vented his  cylinder-blowing  apparatus,  which  sup- 
planted the  crude  bellows  in  supplying  the  neces- 
sary blast.  But  the  most  important  discovery 
was  made  by  Cort  in  1784;  this  was  the  process 
called  "puddling,"  by  which  for  the  first  time  it 
became  possible  to  make  malleable  iron  by  the 
use  of  coal  instead  of  charcoal.  This  discovery, 
the  essential  element  of  which  is  the  purification 
of  raw  iron  by  means  of  oxygen,  was  supple- 
mented by  another  also  made  by  Gort,  that  of  the 
substitution  of  grooved  rollers  in  place  of  the 
hammer  in  making  bars  or  plates.  A  few  years 
later  Cort's  process  came  into  general  use  through 
the  annulment  of  his  patent,  and  resulted  in  a 
marvelous  increase  in  the  production  of  iron 
through  the  kingdom,  particularly  in  those  re- 
gions of  northwestern  England  where  coal  and 


English  Scientific  Thought     289 

Iron  are  found  in  close  proximity.  By  the  end  of 
the  Napoleonic  era  England,  instead  of  import- 
ing iron,  was  exporting  it  at  the  rate  of  91,000 
tons  a  year.  The  significance  of  this  fact  for  us, 
however,  lies  not  so  much  in  the  increase  of  Eng- 
land's export  trade  as  in  the  fact  that  from  this 
time  on  an  adequate  supply  of  machinery  was  as- 
sured. This  development  of  the  iron  industry 
had  also  produced  a  corresponding  stimulus  to 
coal  mining,  which  placed  at  the  command  of  fac- 
tory owners  a  seemingly  inexhaustible  supply  of 
coal.  Thus  had  England's  natural  resources 
made  possible  the  permanent  establishment  of  her 
industrial  supremacy, — a  supremacy  which  could 
not  have  been  achieved,  however,  had  not  Eng- 
lishmen in  true  Baconian  fashion  turned  to  prac- 
tical use  that  knowledge  of  natural  phenomena 
which  her  scientists  had  already  placed  at  their 
disposal. 

Thus  was  brought  to  pass  that  remarkable  in- 
dustrial transformation  by  which  the  agricultural 
England  of  the  early  eighteenth  century  became 
the  leader  in  all  those  great  social,  industrial  and 
economic  movements,  which  have  so  distinctly 
characterized  the  last  one  hundred  years.  As 
Frederick  Ogg,  in  his  "Social  Progress  in  Con- 
temporary Europe,"   has  pointed  out:     "There 


290  English  Leadership 

has  been  no  small  amount  of  speculation  as  to  why 
England  should  have  produced  the  unrivaled  gal- 
axy of  inventors — Kay,  Hargreaves,  Arkwright, 
Crompton,  Cartwright,  Radcliff,  Horrocks,  New- 
comen,  Watt,  Cort,  and  a  host  of  others — by 
whom  in  the  eighteenth  and  earlier  nineteenth  cen- 
turies the  industrial  leadership  of  the  kingdom 
was  so  firmly  established.  It  was  not  because 
the  need  of  improved  mechanical  appliances  was 
more  keenly  felt  than  in  France,  Germany, 
Switzerland,  and  other  countries.  It  was  not  be- 
cause England  was  a  leader  in  pure  science.  It 
seems  to  have  been  primarily  because  of  two 
things, — first  the  fact  that  the  need  was  as  keenly 
felt  as  elsewhere,  and  second,  the  pronounced 
tendency  of  English  genius,  at  any  rate  in  the  pe- 
riod mentioned,  in  the  direction  of  practical,  ap- 
plied science,  rather  than  in  that  of  pure  science. 
While  continental  savants  prosecuted  their  re- 
searches in  light,  electricity,  and  chemical  reac- 
tions, Englishmen  of  scientific  Interests  busied 
themselves  with  the  application  of  knowledge  al- 
ready available.  With  but  an  exception  or  two, 
the  English  inventors  were  men  of  very  ordinary 
education,  and  several  of  them  were  but  tinkers 
and  jacks-of-all-trades.  Through  an  infinite 
amount  of  patient  experimentation  they  contrived 


English  Scientific  Thought     291 

to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  problems  of  everyday 
industry  the  discoveries  of  their  more  brilliant  con- 
tinental contemporaries.  Watt,  for  example, 
made  practical  use  of  the  expansive  power  of 
heat,  and  the  result  was  the  steam-engine;  but  the 
idea  that  such  a  thing  could  be  done  seems  to  have 
originated  with  the  physicist  of  Marburg.  The 
steam-engine  came  in  response  to  a  very  definite 
need — the  need,  that  is,  of  pumps  of  greater 
power  in  mines  which  were  reaching  levels  where 
the  old  hand-power  or  horse-power  pumps  could 
not  be  made  to  serve.  Here  and  in  scores  of 
other  cases  the  principle  that  necessity  precedes 
Invention  was  abundantly  illustrated,  even  though 
continental  experience  demonstrated  that  neces- 
sity does  not  always  produce  invention." 

This  marvelous  series  of  mechanical  inventions 
and  of  Industrial  processes,  which  England, 
through  the  application  of  science,  had  brought 
forth  during  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  the  culmination  of  one  of  the  two  main 
lines  of  development,  which  marked  the  second 
great  period  in  English  science.  But  Its  effects 
did  not  stop  here.  From  England  the  Indus- 
trial Revolution  spread  to  France,  from  there  to 
Germany  and  other  European  nations,  whence  Its 
Influence  has  been  felt  throughout  the  whole  civ- 


292  English  Leadership 

ilized  world.  Meanwhile  the  marked  inventive 
genius  of  the  English-speaking  peoples  was^  find- 
ing expression  in  other  ways.  Their  invention 
and  development  of  the  ocean  steamer  and  of  the 
locomotive,  of  the  automobile  and  the  aeroplane 
supplied  the  great  means  of  communication  and 
transportation  which  have  brought  together  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  Their  perfecting 
of  the  press  has  placed  the  newspaper  in  prac- 
tically every  home,  while  the  telegraph  and  tele- 
phone have  carried  the  mind  of  man  to  the  re- 
motest regions  of  the  world.  Their  invention 
of  the  reaper  and  the  sewing  machine,  together 
with  a  host  of  similar  labor-saving  devices,  has 
not  only  lightened  the  burden  of  labor  and  mul- 
tiplied man's  power  and  efficiency  in  industry; 
these  in  themselves  are  achievements  of  no  mean 
importance,  but  their  full  significance  becomes  ap- 
parent only  when  we  realize  that  such  relief  from 
labor  means  also  that  leisure  for  self-improve- 
ment and  for  appreciation  of  the  finer  things  of 
life  which  are  destined  more  and  more  to  deter- 
mine the  course  of  social  progress. 

These  achievements,  as  Professor  Robinson 
has  said,  "serve  to  explain  the  world  in  which 
we  live,  with  its  busy  cities,  its  gigantic  factories 
filled  with  complicated  machinery,  its  commerce 


English  Scientific  Thought     293 

and  vast  fortunes,  Its  trade  unions  and  labor  par- 
ties, i^s  bewildering  variety  of  plans  for  better- 
ing the  lot  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people."  It 
was  the  Industrial  Revolution  which  brought 
about  the  great  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  those 
which  followed  It  with  all  their  ramifications  In 
English  political  history,  a  series  by  which  the 
spirit  of  democracy  was  for  all  time  established 
on  English  soil.  It  was  that  same  Industrial 
Revolution,  the  problems  of  which  served  to 
waken  and  rouse  men's  minds  to  grapple  with 
those  great  social,  industrial  and  economic  ques- 
tions upon  the  solution  of  which  our  future  civ- 
ilization depends. 

While  the  tendency  to  occupy  the  social  point 
of  view  was  greatly  increased  by  the  Industrial 
Revolution,  and  our  general  view  of  the  world 
very  materially  affected  by  new  ways  of  spinning 
and  weaving,  this  tendency  Is  nevertheless  only 
a  continuation  of  that  decidedly  ethical,  utilitarian 
and  economic  bent,  which  has  characterized  all 
modern  English  thinking  from  Francis  Bacon 
down  through  the  centuries  to  Sir  Francis  Gal- 
ton  on  the  one  hand,  or  to  E.  R.  A.  Seligman  on 
the  other.  It  was  the  attempt  made  by  Adam 
Smith,  late  in  the  eighteenth  century,  to  furnish 
a  rational  analysis  of  such  problems,  which  led 


294  English  Leadership 

to  that  other  great  achievement  which  marked 
the  second  period  of  English  scientific  thought, — 
the  foundation  of  the  science  of  economics. 

Up  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
economic  ideas  had  not  been  formulated  into  any 
definite  body  which  could  be  called  a  science;  they 
had  instead  been  included  within  other  bodies  of 
doctrine,  such  as  ethics  or  jurisprudence;  to 
found  a  separate  science  of  economics  It  was  nec- 
essary to  Isolate  these  scattered  ideas  and  bring 
them  together  in  a  definite  and  independent  sys- 
tem of  thought.  Adam  Smith  was  not  the  first 
of  English  thinkers  who  had  attempted  to  for- 
mulate a  definite  body  of  economic  laws.  All 
through  the  seventeenth  century  there  had  been  a 
steadily  increasing  number  of  pamphlets  on  this 
subject;  but  most  of  them  had  been  written  in 
consequence  of  some  specific  situation, — in  de- 
fense of  or  in  attack  upon  some  monopoly  or 
privilege  or  some  particular  legislation.  Each 
one  had  his  own  ax  to  grind;  but  out  of  it  all, 
nevertheless,  had  come  a  most  profitable  realiza- 
tion of  the  importance  of  the  navy,  of  shipping, 
and  of  colonial  development,  for  it  was  the  theory 
of  the  Mercantilists,  whose  ideas  had  up  to  this 
time  dominated  the  economic  affairs  of  the  na- 
tion, that  the  chief  source  of  wealth  lay  in  com- 


English  Scientific  Thought     295 

merce,  and  in  the  actual  supply  of  gold  and  sil- 
ver coin.  It  was  only  natural  that  such  a  system 
as  this  with  its  narrow  emphasis  on  foreign  trade, 
should  have  found  its  greatest  support  in  the 
maritime  England  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries.  It  can  hardly  be  called  a  spec- 
ulative doctrine;  it  was  rather,  as  some  one  has 
said,  a  spontaneous  growth  resulting  from  the 
reaction  of  social  conditions  on  minds  not  trained 
to  scientific  habits. 

Of  all  writers  of  the  period,  however,  the 
only  one  who  can  deservedly  be  called  a  fore- 
runner of  Adam  Smith  was  Nicholas  Barbon 
( 1 640-1 689),  for  he,  putting  personal  interests, 
entirely  aside,  honestly  tried  to  define  those  fun- 
damental principles,  the  existence  of  which  was. 
either  ignored  or  taken  for  granted  by  the 
pamphleteers.  Barbon's  work  was  the  first  real 
protest  against  the  English  Mercantilist  policy, 
which  had  already  outlived  its  usefulness.  His 
ideas  were  the  natural  outcome  of  the  agricul- 
tural improvement  which  took  place  in  England 
during  the  late  seventeenth  century  and  which 
was  to  convince  Englishmen  of  the  profitableness 
of  farming  on  a  larger  scale  with  greater  capital 
and  with  the  scientific  application  of  the  princi- 
ple  of  crop-rotation.      It   was   Barbon's  protest 


296  English  Leadership 

against  the  Mercantilist  theory  which  gave  im- 
petus to  the  emphasis  placed  by  French  econo- 
mists upon  the  importance  of  agriculture.  It  is 
a  matter  worthy  of  note,  too,  that  as  early  as 
1685  this  English  thinker  had  already  hit  upon 
a  fundamental  assumption  of  modern  political 
economy,  which  we  find  expressed  in  his  own  sim- 
ple words:  "To  be  well  fed,  well  clothed,  and 
well  lodged,  without  labor  of  either  body  or  mind, 
is  the  true  definition  of  a  rich  man."  Further- 
more, his  insistence  upon  the  fact  that  "prohibi- 
tion of  any  foreign  commodity  doth  hinder  the 
making  of  so  much  of  the  native"  is  a  striking 
anticipation  of  the  modern  free-trade  doctrine 
that  any  check  on  imports  acts  as  a  check  on  ex- 
ports; but  in  no  case  did  the  seventeenth  century 
pamphleteers  touch  in  any  illuminating  fashion 
upon  the  question  of  the  distribution  of  wealth 
now  so  universally  regarded  as  the  most  impor- 
tant branch  of  economics.  For  them  the  great 
question  was  not  distribution  but  production,  or, 
in  other  words,  the  increase  of  the  total  national 
wealth.  Barbon's  ideas,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
the  natural  expression  not  only  of  the  agricultural 
changes  being  wrought  in  England  during  his  day, 
but  also  of  the  general  philosophical  conceptions, 
the  trend  of  which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was 


English  Scientific  Thought     297 

being  determined  by  his  more  famous   contem- 
poraries, Newton  and  Locke. 

The  significance  of  the  whole  school  of  Eng- 
lish natural  philosophy, — the  philosophy  of  New- 
ton and  of  Locke,  of  Barbon,  and  of  Berkeley 
and  Hume, — lies  in  their  common  belief  that  the 
conduct  of  men  in  society  is  subject  to  natural  law 
in  the  same  way  that  the  equilibrium  of  nature 
is  maintained  by  physical  law.  This  mechanical 
conception  of  the  universe,  like  everything  else 
English,  is  very  intimately  bound  up  with  the 
theory  of  utilitarianism,  a  system  of  ethical  doc- 
trine which  asserts  that  conduct  is  morally  good 
in  proportion  as  it  promotes  the  greatest  happi- 
ness of  the  greatest  number.  Though  the  word 
"utilitarianism"  was  not  coined  until  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  first  hint  of  the  theory  had 
been  given  by  Lord  Bacon,  and  his  idea  had  re- 
appeared in  Hobbes'  declaration  that  since  man's 
natural  state  is  one  of  warring  self-interest,  the 
function  of  government  should  be  the  further- 
ance of  the  common  weal.  A  little  later  John 
Locke's  strong  assertion  of  individualism  had 
done  much  to  popularize  the  theory.  It  crept 
into  eighteenth-century  theology  in  the  guise  of 
the  doctrine  that  all  the  movements  of  the  uni- 
verse were  guided  and  controlled  by  divine  wis- 


298  English  Leadership 

dom  and  benevolence  In  such  a  way  as  to  produce 
the  greatest  possible  sum  of  human  happiness. 
This  dogma  In  turn  was  carried  over  Into  the 
realm  of  philosophy  by  Berkeley  and  Hume,  the 
English  successors  of  Locke,  who  developed  It 
into  the  conception  of  a  jus  naturae;  this  "law  of 
nature"  they  represented  as  a  harmonious  and 
beneficial  code  Inherent  In  nature  and  antecedent 
to  human  Institutions,  whose  laws  are  human  and 
whose  arrangements  are  the  Imperfect  ones  of 
existing  governments.  That  nation  was  best  gov- 
erned, therefore,  whose  laws  and  Institutions  came 
nearest  to  expressing  the  constitution  of  the  nat- 
ural order.  Such  was  the  political  philosophy 
of  David  Hume,  whose  Ideas  In  particular  acted 
as  a  subtle  leaven  to  French  thought,  especially 
in  his  influence  over  Turgot  and  Rousseau. 

Influenced  by  this  English  school  of  philosophy 
so  markedly  utilitarian  In  spirit,  there  arose  In 
France  about  1750  a  group  of  thinkers,  chiefly 
economists,  known  as  the  Physiocrats,  one  of 
whose  leaders  was  Turgot,  the  friend  of  Hume. 
Following  their  English  guides,  Barbon,  Locke, 
and  Hume,  they  extended  the  mechanical  theory 
into  the  economic  world  and  conceived  the  produc- 
tion and  distribution  of  goods  as  carried  on  ac- 
cording to  fixed  laws  of  nature.     These,  they  as- 


English  Scientific  Thought     299 

serted,  must  be  sought  out  and  strictly  observed 
if  men  are  to  realize  their  highest  social  welfare. 
They  preferred  to  call  themselves  the  "Econo- 
mists," because,  taking  the  tillage  of  the  soil  as  a 
starting  point,  they  based  their  reasoning  upon 
the  conception  of  natural  liberty,  and  "like  our 
Locke,"  attached  a  new  significance  to  the  individ- 
ual and  his  rights.  Society,  according  to  their 
view,  is  composed  of  Individuals  all  of  whom  have 
the  same  natural  rights;  and  even  though  all 
might  not  have  the  same  capacities,  nevertheless 
each  Individual,  understanding  his  own  interests 
best,  would  be  more  likely  to  act  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  of  nature  than  would  the  govern- 
ment. Whence  their  maxim,  laissez  faire,  "let 
things  alone."  The  state  or  community  Is  only  a 
contract  between  individuals,  the  object  of  which 
Is  to  limit  the  natural  liberty  of  each  only  as  far 
as  is  necessary  to  secure  the  rights  of  others.  The 
function  of  government,  therefore.  Is  not  to  ex- 
tend control  over  the  Individual,  but  solely  to  pro- 
tect his  life,  liberty  and  property.  Since  the  ideas 
of  liberty  and  of  property  inherent  In  the  very  na- 
ture of  man  are  essential  to  his  individualism,  the 
chief  function  of  human  law  should  be  to  recog- 
nize, formulate  and  maintain  these  rights. 

This  economii:  theory  of  the  French  Physio- 


300  English  Leadership 

crats  with  its  emphasis  upon  land  and  upon  in- 
dividualism followed  the  Englishman  Barbon  in 
protest  against  the  Mercantilist  theory  that  com- 
merce was  the  measure  of  a  nation's  wealth.  The 
Physiocrats  held,  on  the  contrary,  that  wealth 
came  from  nature;  thus  they  placed  the  emphasis 
not  upon  commerce,  but  rather  upon  agriculture. 
The  Mercantilist  doctrine  of  trade  regulation 
gave  way  before  the  laissez  faire  of  the  Physio- 
crat. One  of  their  most  important  tenets  was 
their  emphasis  upon  the  value  of  land  and  its 
surplus  or  produit  net; — in  other  words  the 
theory  that  only  that  labor  is  truly  productive 
which  adds  to  the  quantity  of  raw  materials,  agri- 
cultural and  mineral,  thereby  made  available  for 
use  by  man;  the  annual  addition  to  the  wealth  of 
the  community  is  measured  by  the  excess  of  the 
mass  of  such  products  over  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion; and  upon  the  amount  of  this  excess,  or  pro- 
duit net,  depends  the  well-being  of  the  state  and 
its  progress  in  civilization.  In  order  to  secure 
at  the  same  time  the  maximum  economic  gain  and 
the  maximum  individual  liberty,  they  believed  not 
only  in  the  possession  of  private  property  but  also 
in  the  greatest  possible  freedom  for  the  individual 
in  the  disposition  of  his  property;  in  other  words 
there  must  be  entire  freedom  of  exchange,  there 


English  Scientific  Thought     301 

must  be  unrestricted  competition,  there  must  be 
no  control  exercised  through  monopolies  or  spe- 
cial privilege. 

The  service  of  the  Physiocrats  on  the  whole 
was  on  the  one  hand  largely  negative  In  conse- 
quence of  its  insistence  upon  greater  freedom 
from  restraining  regulations  and  burdensome  tax- 
ation. On  the  other  hand  their  Idea  of  distribu- 
tion was  the  source  of  many  succeeding  attempts 
to  trace  the  round  of  production  and  exchange, 
distribution  and  consumption.  But  more  than 
anything  else  their  service  to  economic  thought  lies 
in  the  fact  that  their  attempt,  under  English  In- 
fluence, to  formulate  a  body  of  exact  principles 
apart  from  morals,  politics,  and  jurisprudence 
resulted  in  the  founding  of  economics  as  a  dis- 
tinct and  Independent  science. 

But  before  this  body  of  economic  thought  could 
receive  permanent  recognition  as  a  science.  It  re- 
mained, still,  for  the  great  English  thinker,  Adam 
Smith,  to  modify,  broaden  and  organize  these 
fundamental  principles  into  a  unified  and  coherent 
system.  This  he  did  through  the  publication  of 
his  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  which  appeared  in 
1776,  the  year  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence. The  same  forces  which  had  produced  the 
American    Revolution    had    also    produced    the 


302  English  Leadership 

"Wealth  of  Nations,"  for  Smith's  insistence  upon 
the  economic  freedom  of  the  Individual  and  upon 
the  restriction  of  government  control  over  pro- 
duction and  distribution  were  but  the  inevitable 
outcome  and  expression  of  that  general  unrest 
and  assertion  of  individualism  which  was,  during 
this  period,  a  marked  characteristic  of  all  thought, 
religious  and  philosophical  as  well  as  political  and 
economic.  Smith's  "Theory  of  Moral  Senti- 
ments" shows  how  clearly  he  perceived  the  inter- 
dependence between  the  economic  and  all  the  oth- 
er phases  of  social  phenomena;  In  this  work,  as 
he  says,  he  Intends  to  give  "an  account  of  the  gen- 
eral principles  of  law  and  government,  and  of 
the  different  revolutions  they  have  undergone  In 
the  different  ages  and  periods  of  society,  not  only 
In  what  concerns  police,  revenue  and  arms  but 
whatever  else  is  the  subject  of  law."  These 
words,  as  some  one  has  pointed  out,  are  "an  an- 
ticipation, wonderful  for  his  period,  of  general 
sociology." 

The  degree  to  which  he  was  successful  In  the 
achievement  of  his  purpose  Is  a  matter  of  con- 
siderable difference  of  opinion.  But  none  can 
question  his  broad,  keen,  and  discriminating  ob- 
servation of  social  phenomena  and  his  markedly 
English  tendency  to  draw  from  these  their  full 


English  Scientific  Thought     303 

significance,  rather  than  to  derive  his  conclusions 
by  deductive  processes  of  logic  from  previously 
postulated  abstract  principles.  That  he  did,  how- 
ever, in  some  degree  fall  a  victim  to  certain  warp- 
ing postulates  must  be  admitted.  His  general  ac- 
ceptance of  the  tenets  of  the  English  school  of 
philosophical  utilitarianism  represented  by  David 
Hume  led  him  to  a  more  or  less  optimistic  con- 
ception of  a  system  of  economics  based  upon  an 
enlightened  self-interest.  But  on  the  other  hand 
he  sought  at  the  same  time  to  analyze  and  inter- 
pret existing  institutions  as  results  of  social  phe- 
nomena which  had  been  actually  observed  In  oper- 
ation. His  more  or  less  mechanical  interpreta- 
tion of  economic  questions,  together  with  a  lean- 
ing toward  materialism,  have  laid  him  open  to 
severe  criticism  from  an  opposing  school  of 
thought  which  asserts  that  he  failed  to  regard 
wealth  as  a  means  to  the  higher  aims  of  life, 
failed  lll^^ewlse  to  keep  in  view  the  moral  destina- 
tion of  the  race. 

It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  In  the  years 
following  the  publication  of  his  "Wealth  of  Na- 
tions," Smith's  ideas  exercised  a  far-reaching  in- 
fluence In  the  assertion  of  personal  freedom  and 
'"natural  rights."  It  discredited  completely  the 
Mercantilist  policy  of  the  past,  and  gave  a  power- 


304  English  Leadership 

ful  Impetus  to  the  overthrow  of  institutions  no 
longer  suited  to  modern  conditions  of  social  life. 
It  is  a  matter  of  interest  to  Darwinians,  too,  that 
both  Turgot  and  Adam  Smith  mentioned  the  ef- 
fects of  the  increase  of  population  upon  the  wages 
of  the  laboring  classes,  and  so  pointed  the  way 
twenty-two  years  later  for  Malthus'  memorable 
"Essay  on  the  Principle  of  Population"  (1798)  ; 
for  it  was  the  attempt  made  in  this  essay  toward 
the  discovery  and  scientific  treatment  of  laws  gov- 
erning such  increase  that  guided  Charles  Darwin 
to  his  theory  of  natural  selection.  This  Is  only 
one  instance  of  the  widely  diverging  currents  of 
thought  set  going  by  Smith's  "Wealth  of  Na- 
tions." 

Whatever  may  be  the  present  opinion  of 
Smith's  theories  as  a  guide  to  future  social  recon- 
struction, he  Is  nevertheless  universally  acknowl- 
edged as  the  Father  of  all  modern  political  econ- 
omy. Professor  Haney,  In  his  "History  of 
Economic  thought,"  has  pointed  out  the  merits 
which,  according  to  his  view,  entitle  Adam  Smith 
to  this  distinction:  "Building  upon  the  thought  of 
English  predecessors  and  the  Physiocrats,  and  In- 
fluenced by  a  different  environment,  he  turned 
from  'nature'  or  agriculture  as  the  source  of 
wealth,  and  gave  to  labor  that  position.     While, 


English  Scientific  Thought    305 

on  the  whole,  a  believer  in  free  trade  and  laissez 
faire,  he  was  more  of  an  opportunist,  and  was 
less  rigid  and  absolute  in  applying  his  doctrines. 
■Smith's  work  was  fuller  and  more  comprehensive 
than  that  of  Quesnay  or  Turgot,  and  the  firm  es- 
tablishment of  political  economy  may  justly  be 
dated  from  the  'Wealth  of  Nations'  (1776). 
Smith  took  the  sole  emphasis  away  from  produc- 
tion, putting  the  consumer  more  to  the  front,  and 
in  doing  so  prepared  the  way  for  a  broader  treat- 
ment of  economics.  He  also  presented  a  more 
comprehensive  discussion  of  value  and  the  shares 
in  distribution  than  any  predecessor.  Although 
some  of  his  followers  wrote  more  accurately  and 
confidently  than  he,  Adam  Smith  excels  the  great 
majority  of  them  in  breadth  of  view,  and  there 
came  a  time  when  many  economists  turned  back 
to  the  Father  of  Political  Economy  rather  than 
to  his  immediate  successors." 

One  of  the  most  notable  instances,  perhaps,  of 
the  effects  of  this  utilitarian  view  of  political 
economy  upon  the  broader  but  closely  related 
lines  of  political  and  philosophical  theory,  is  to 
be  seen  in  the  teachings  of  Jeremy  Bentham 
(1748-1832),  whose  far-reaching  influence  on 
English  legislation  has  been  pointed  out  by  Mr. 
Earned  in  an  unpublished  part  of  his  essay  on 


3o6  English  Leadership 

"English  Leadings  in  Modern  History."  "In  the 
home  government  of  England,"  Mr.  Lamed 
writes,  "this  progress  toward  just  law  and  large 
individual  freedom  received  a  remarkable  quick- 
ening, within  some  early  decades  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, from  the  influence  of  the  teachings  of  Jeremy 
Bentham  and  the  numerous  disciples  who  took  in- 
spiration from  him.  The  working  of  this  in- 
fluence on  English  legislation,  between  about  1825 
and  1865,  is  traced  with  clearness  by  Mr,  A.  V. 
Dicey  in  his  interesting  Harvard  lectures  on  'The 
Relation  between  Law  and  Public  Opinion  in 
England.'  Starting  from  the  conception  that  all 
right  objects  in  life  are  summed  up  in  the  promo- 
tion of  'the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number,'  Bentham's  doctrines,  urged  with  tire- 
less ardor  and  energy  by  him  throughout  a  long 
life,  acted  slowly  but  powerfully  and  variously  on 
English  thought  and  feeling.  They  involved  a 
philosophical  belief  in  the  utilitarian  theory  of 
morals,  and  a  practical  belief  in  the  laissez  faire 
or  'let  alone'  theory  of  legislation,  grounded  on 
the  assumption  that  every  person,  as  a  general 
rule,  is  the  best  judge  of  his  own  happiness,  and 
should  be  restricted  in  free  action  no  farther  than 
is  necessary  for  securing  equal  freedom  among  his 


English  Scientific  Thought     307 

neighbors.     All  the  springs  of  humanitarian  feel- 
ing were  fed  by  both  these  beliefs. 

"Generally,  within  the  range  of  European  or 
western  civilization,  many  influences  had  been 
working  always  and  increasingly  in  these  direc- 
tions; influences  which  received  a  great  stimula- 
tion in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  then  were  checked  by  the  reaction  which  fol- 
lowed the  French  Revolution.  All  such  genial 
and  generous  forces  in  modern  civilization  had 
come  into  activity  again  at  the  time  referred  to, 
and  were  universally  felt;  but  the  Bentham  gospel 
of  greatest  happiness  for  the  greatest  number  did 
undoubtedly  bring  a  special  stimulation  of  them 
to  English  feeling,  and  give  a  powerful  impulse 
to  rapid  moral  advances  in  politics  and  law.  It 
had  not  a  little  to  do  with  the  transfer  of  the  con- 
trol of  government  from  the  land-owning  oli- 
garchy to  the  middle  class  in  English  society,  by 
the  parliamentary  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  It  has 
even  more,  perhaps,  to  do  with  the  compensated 
emancipation  of  slaves  in  British  colonies,  under 
the  Act  of  1833,  and  with  the  energetic  activity 
of  England  against  the  African  slave-trade,  which 
she  pursued  with  little  help  from  other  Powers 
until  that  infamy  no  longer  shamed  mankind.  It 
must  have  been,  moreover,  among  the  reenforce- 


3o8  English  Leadership 

ments  which  came  at  this  time  to  the  doctrines  of 
Adam  Smith's  'Wealth  of  Nations,'  contribut- 
ing to  the  break-down  of  the  English  'corn-laws,' 
and  ultimately  to  the  overthrow  of  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  governmental  'protection'  to  prices  and 
profits  for  a  few  at  the  expense  of  all. 

"These  are  merely  conspicuous  among  many 
results  that  come  partly  or  wholly  from  the  gen- 
eral movement  of  reform  in  legislation  for  which 
Bentham  labored,  to  harmonize  It  with  philo- 
sophical principles  of  humanity  and  right.  Within 
the  forty  years  which  Mr.  Dicey  calls  'the  period 
of  Benthamism  or  Individualism'  the  whole  tem- 
per of  the  criminal  law  was  changed;  its  penalties 
were  mitigated;  capital  punishment  was  reserved 
for  murder  alone;  Imprisonment  for  debt  was 
brought  nearly  to  an  end;  Important  beginnings 
were  made  in  legislation  for  regulating  the  hours 
and  conditions  of  labor  In  factories,  especially  In 
the  Interest  of  women  and  children;  cruelty  to 
dumb  animals  began  to  be  dealt  with  by  law;  and 
the  right  of  workmen  to  combine  in  trade  unions, 
denied  formerly,  was  conceded  to  a  limited  ex- 
tent." 

The  work  of  Bentham  is  a  typical  illustration 
of  the  growth  and  outspreading  of  that  English 
political  utilitarianism  which  we  have  seen  fore- 


English  Scientific  Thought     309 

shadowed  in  Hobbes  two  hundred  years  before. 
Though  not  confined  to  political  and  legislative 
fields,  Bentham's  activities  were  not  particularly- 
concerned,  however,  with  the  more  strictly 
economic  phase  of  English  thought.  A  truer  rep- 
resentative of  the  work  of  Adam  Smith  and  of 
the  ever  widening  circles  of  his  influence,  is  to  be 
found  in  that  most  ardent  pupil  of  Bentham's, — 
John  Stuart  Mill  ( 1 806-1873 ) ,  who  set  out  to  do 
for  his  own  generation  what  Smith  had  done  for 
the  late  eighteenth  century.  The  monument  to 
his  attempt  is  his  "Principles  of  Political  Econ- 
omy" (1848),  for  a  time  the  most  widely  influen- 
tial of  all  modern  works  upon  that  subject. 
Though  his  conception  of  the  field  of  economics 
was  less  narrow  and  formal  than  that  of  Ricardo, 
who  had  been  Smith's  immediate  successor,  never- 
theless Mill  did  not  by  any  means  achieve  the 
ideal  which  he  had  set  for  himself.  He  never 
grew  to  the  stature  of  a  "modern  Adam  Smith," 
— he  succeeded  only  in  becoming  an  elegantly 
lucid  and  overgrown  Ricardo,  with  an  acquired 
Malthusian  complexion.  Strenuous  believer  in 
rationalism  though  he  was,  he  nevertheless  was 
often  inconsistent,  uncertain  and  superficial,  and 
his  work  in  economics  failed  to  stand  the  acid  test 
of  scientific  criticism. 


310  English  Leadership 

But  while  his  actual  contribution  to  the  body 
of  English  economic  science  was  neither  great  nor 
permanent,  he  nevertheless  performed  a  most 
significant  service  for  English  philosophic  thought 
in  general  and  for  ethics  in  particular.  The  sys- 
tem of  thought  which  Mill  set  himself  to  expound 
was  in  the  main  the  utilitarianism  of  his  father 
and  of  Bentham.  In  philosophy  John  Stuart  Mill 
is  the  final  exponent  of  that  empirical  school 
whose  foundations  were  laid  in  Newtonian 
physics,  whose  chief  tenets  were  outlined  by  John 
Locke  and  later  elaborated  by  Berkeley  and 
Hume.  The  chief  characteristic  of  this  "typically 
English"  school  has  continuously  been  the  empha- 
sis laid  upon  human  reason, — an  insistence,  that 
is,  upon  the  duty  of  every  philosopher  to  investi- 
gate truth  for  himself,  rather  than  accept  the 
authority  of  another.  In  other  words,  knowledge 
must  be  rooted  in  experience.  It  is  this  individ- 
ualism together  with  an  increasing  tendency  to 
give  first  place  to  psychological  problems  which 
marks  the  school  as  so  characteristically  English. 

But  Mill's  greatest  service  lies  in  the  fact  that 
he,  more  strongly  than  any  of  his  predecessors, 
has  emphasized  the  humanist  element.  His 
thought  was  for  his  fellow-men  about  him  rather 
than  for  Man  in  the  abstract.     He  early  realized 


English  Scientific  Thought     311 

on  the  one  hand  the  need  of  a  broad  and  demo- 
cratic education  for  the  people  as  a  whole,  and 
on  the  other  the  need  of  greater  harmony  among 
philosophers  in  order  that  humanitarian  reforms 
might  be  given  that  same  basis  of  fundamental 
agreement  which  characterizes  all  other  scientific 
advance.  Though  the  general  color  of  his  thought 
may  be  in  some  respects  quite  justly  called  a  "ma- 
terialistic political  utilitarianism,"  Mill  is  never- 
theless an  admirable  example  of  the  steadily  in- 
creasing idealistic  and  humanitarian  tendencies  of 
the  middle  and  later  nineteenth  century, — ten- 
dencies which  were  given  their  first  great  impulse 
in  those  conditions  which  had  arisen  out  of  the 
Industrial  Revolution  with  Its  consequent  develop- 
ment of  the  spirit  of  democracy.  Mill's  earnest 
plea  for  the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  women,  and  the  alleviation  of  poverty, 
his  belief,  too,  that  the  cultivation  of  altruistic 
feelings  would  offset  the  old  "natural  order"  of 
innate  self-interest,  and  his  insistence  upon  the 
necessity  of  a  well-safeguarded  social  order  and 
security  compatible  with  a  complete  intellectual 
liberty,  and  a  broad  toleration  of  individual  ac- 
tion,— all  these  mark  John  Stuart  Mill  as  one  of 
England's  most  conspicuous  leaders  of  thought  in 
an  age  whose-  most  remarkable  feature  was  the 


312  English  Leadership 

development  of  humanitarian  sentiment.  Social 
sympathy  was  to  him  the  mainspring  of  obliga- 
tion and  the  sanction  of  morality;  for  "morality," 
he  says,  "consists  In  conscientious  shrinking  from 
the  violation  of  moral  rules;  and  the  basis  of  this 
conscientious  sentiment  Is  the  social  feelings  of 
mankind;  the  desire  to  be  In  unity  with  our  fellow 
creatures,  which  Is  already  a  powerful  principle 
In  human  nature,  and  happily  one  of  those  which 
tend  to  become  stronger  from  the  influence  of 
alvancing  civilization." 

But  Mill's  altruistic  Ideals  did  not  lead  him  to 
the  present  conception  of  sociology  as  a  science, 
probably  because  the  early  establishment  of  po- 
litical economy  in  England  as  an  Independent 
science  had  concentrated  attention  upon  practical 
problems  of  legislation  and  administration  con- 
nected with  the  subject,  to  the  virtual  neglect  and 
exclusion  of  other  social  questions,  the  impor- 
tance of  which  has  not  until  recent  years  been 
recognized.  As  Merz  has  suggested,  "the  ex- 
isting political  Order  In  this  country  with  its 
enviable  constitution, — considered  by  many  for- 
eign philosophers  as  a  model  of  political  or- 
ganization to  be  initiated  by  the  aspiring  peo- 
ples of  the  Continent, — relieved  English  thinkers 
from  dealing  with  fundamentals  or  answering  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     313 

abstract  question  of  what  society  is  or  ought  to 
be."  But  Mill  was  far  from  any  smug  satisfac- 
tion with  the  intellectual  conservatism  of  the  mid- 
Victorian  period.  "Where  there  is,"  he  says  in 
his  essay  "On  Liberty,"  "a  tacit  convention  that 
principles  are  not  to  be  disputed,  where  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  greatest  questions  which  can  occupy 
humanity  is  considered  to  be  closed,  we  cannot 
hope  to  find  that  generally  high  scale  of  mental 
activity  which  has  made  some  periods  of  history 
so  remarkable.  .  .  .  These  periods  [the  Refor- 
mation, the  French  Revolution,  and  die  Auf- 
klarung]  differed  widely  in  the  particular  opinions 
which  they  developed;  but  they  were  alike  in  this, 
that  during  all  three  the  yoke  of  authority  was 
broken.  In  each  an  old  mental  despotism  had 
been  thrown  off,  and  no  new  one  had  yet  taken  its 
place.  .  .  .  Appearances  have  for  some  time  in- 
dicated that  all  three  impulses  are  well-nigh  spent; 
and  we  can  expect  no  fresh  start  until  we  again 
assert  our  mental  freedom."  Mill's  whole  life,  de- 
voted as  it  was  to  the  furtherance  of  political 
freedom  and  to  the  amelioration  of  the  oppressed 
lower  classes,  is  in  itself  the  greatest  monument 
ito  his  belief  in  intellectual  freedom  and  a  con- 
scious social  progress,  a  belief  in  the  practicability 
iof  Bacon's  vision  that  in  the  application  of  scien- 


314  English  Leadership 

tific  knowledge  lies  the  great  hope  for  the  better- 
ment of  man's  estate. 

The  significance  of  the  work  of  John  Stuart 
Mill  is  seen  not  so  much  in  the  actual  contribution 
which  he  made  to  scientific  or  to  philosophic 
thought,  but  rather  in  the  impulse  which  he  gave 
to  this  idea  that  all  humanitarian  thought  should 
be  based  upon  scientific  knowledge.  His  work  is  the 
culmination  of  one  phase  of  that  great  movement 
toward  industrial  democracy,  which  began  when 
English  genius  first  turned  science  to  account  in 
the  invention  of  machinery.  Out  of  that  move- 
ment there  has  come  a  new  respect  for  the  com- 
mon man,  a  new  appreciation  of  his  individual 
worth,  which  in  turn  have  led  to  a  new  solicitude 
for  his  welfare.  It  is  this  recognition  of  the 
rights  of  the  common  man  that  has  recast  our 
constitutions  and  remade  our  institutions.  It  is 
that  same  social  sentiment,  so  vividly  set  forth 
by  English  utilitarians,  from  Locke  to  Adam 
Smith  and  Bentham,  so  amplified  and  vitalized 
by  Mill,  whose  finer  idealism  and  more  spiritual 
humanitarianism  gave  to  the  world  a  new  concep- 
tion of  the  common  dignity  of  man, — it  is  that 
same  social  sentiment  which  has  found  expression 
in  the  rapid  formulation  of  all  the  social  sciences; 
the  same  social  sentiment  which  has  brought  with 


English  Scientific  Thought     315 

it  a  new  "vision  of  all  the  wonder  that  would  be," 
when  science  should  be  harnessed  to  the  chariot 
of  a  conscious  social  progress.  But  before  that 
mighty  movement  could  come  to  full  fruition  in 
twentieth-century  advance,  it  had  to  wait  upon  an- 
other great  achievement  in  English  scientific 
thought,  another  great  step  in  the  liberation  of 
man's  spirit  from  the  chains  of  authority,  ignor- 
ance and  blind  superstition.  That  new  step,  that 
great  achievement,  was  to  be  the  establishment  of 
the  evolutionary  or  dynamic  view  of  human  life 
and  of  the  universe. 

In  the  meantime  English  thinkers  were  prepar- 
ing the  way  for  such  a  view  through  that  long 
series  of  brilliant  generalizations  and  discoveries 
in  pure  science  which  characterizes  the  third  great 
period  in  the  history  of  English  thought.  This 
new  period  did  not  begin  until  the  close  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars.  During  that  protracted  strug- 
gle the  whole  strength  of  the  nation  had  been 
expended  on  the  work  of  self-preservation;  and 
even  after  the  war  itself  was  over,  England  had 
to  fight  her  way  through  the  desperately  strait- 
ened financial  conditions,  which  the  long  conflict 
had  Involved.  Practically  the  whole  first  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  had  passed  before  Eng- 
land   entered   upon   the    new    and   extraordinary 


3i6  English  Leadership 

career  of  scientific  development  extending  through 
the  last  hundred  years,  which  has  so  vastly  ex- 
tended man's  powers  of  observation  and  research, 
and  so  immensely  broadened  his  intellectual 
horizon. 

Any  attempt  to  enumerate  all  the  achievements 
which  make  up  this  new  series  of  discoveries  and 
generalizations  would  require  not  merely  pages, 
but  many  volumes.  The  briefest  mention  is  suffi- 
cient to  recall  to  us  some  of  the  greatest.  Through 
the  work  of  Priestley,  Cavendish  and  Dalton,  the 
science  of  chemistry  experienced  a  rebirth  in  the 
promulgation  of  the  atomic  theory  of  multiple 
proportions.  At  the  same  time,  a  new  field  was 
added  to  experimental  chemistry  through  a  series 
of  brilliant  electro-chemical  researches  begun  by 
Sir  Humphry  Davy  in  the  early  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century, — a  series  which  prepared  the  way 
for  the  triumphs  of  Michael  Faraday  in  the  in- 
vestigation of  electrical  phenomena,  a  series,  too, 
which  went  far  toward  the  establishment  of  the 
mechanical  theory  of  heat.  It  was  Davy's  em- 
phasis, moreover,  upon  the  vital  relation  of  science 
to  industry  which  inspired  some  of  his  finest  work; 
it  was  this  practical  application  of  science  which 
made  his  lectures  on  agricultural  chemistry  the 
basis   of  England's  leadership   in  the  science  of 


English  Scientific  Thought     317 

agriculture;  and  his  invention  of  the  safety  lamp, 
another  instance  of  his  Baconian  practicality 
which  made  possible  another  great  advance  in 
mining  industries.  On  the  foundations  laid  by 
Priestley,  Dalton  and  Davy,  later  generations 
were  to  build  the  chemistry  which  we  know  to-day. 
Meanwhile,  Sir  Charles  Bell  had  announced  his 
discovery  of  the  specialization  of  functions  in  the 
brain,  an  event  in  the  realm  of  physiology  which 
had  not  been  matched  in  its  importance  since  the 
days  of  Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood.  In  astronomy,  too,  the  English  mind 
was  by  no  means  idle;  Herschel  had  already,  in 
178 1,  made  his  memorable  discovery  of  Uranus, 
the  first  new  planet  to  be  added  to  the  ancient  list 
of  seven,  the  calculation  of  whose  orbit  was  found 
to  conform  completely  to  those  laws  of  planetary 
motion  which  Kepler  and  Newton  one  hundred 
years  before  had  formulated.  During  the  first 
third  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  expansion  of 
the  British  Empire  in  the  southern  hemisphere 
was  accompanied  by  the  English  conquest  of  the 
southern  heavens  through  the  building  of  observa- 
tories at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  elsewhere. 
But  of  far  more  significance  was  the  computation 
by  John  Couch  Adams  in  1841,  simultaneously 
with  Leverrier  in  France,  of  the  exact  location  of 


3i8  English  Leadership 

another  new  planet,  Neptune,  hitherto  unob- 
served. In  1837,  that  year  so  memorable  In  Eng- 
lish history,  the  year  of  the  accession  of  Queen 
Victoria,  the  year  of  the  Invention  of  the  electric 
telegraph  by  the  American,  Samuel  F.  B,  Morse, 
there  had  occurred  another  great  discovery  In 
science, — the  law  of  the  "Conservation  of  En- 
ergy," a  law  which  by  the  Importance  of  Its  revela- 
tion that  energy  Is  In  the  same  degree  Indestruct- 
ible and  uncreatable  as  matter  has  entitled  Its  dis- 
coverer, James  Prescott  Joule,  to  be  ranked  side 
by  side  with  Newton  In  the  history  of  physical 
science.  Greater  still,  however,  was  the  work,  of 
Michael  Faraday,  whose  name  stands  among  the 
most  Illustrious  of  the  century;  for  It  was  his  dis- 
coveries in  the  field  of  electricity  and  magnetism 
which  did  more  than  anything  else  to  place  at 
man's  disposal  all  those  practical  applications  of 
electrical  power  which  are  so  rapidly  transform- 
ing human  industry,  communication  and  transpor- 
tation. Faraday's  discovery  of  electro-magnetic 
induction  made  possible  the  dynamo  which  runs 
so  much  of  our  machinery;  and  his  Investigation 
of  the  laws  which  govern  electrolytic  action  pro- 
vided us  with  the  most  accurate  of  methods  for 
measuring  the  strength  of  an  electric  current.  The 
great  significance  of  these  events,  however,  is  not 


English  Scientific  Thought     319 

merely  in  the  added  power  which  these  new 
achievements  placed  at  man's  disposal;  their  ulti- 
mate value  can  be  fully  appreciated  only  when  we 
realize  that  each  of  these  discoveries  means  a  new 
extension  of  the  frontier  line  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge over  that  vast  wilderness  of  ignorance  and 
prejudice,  superstition  and  "infallible  authority," 
the  conquest  of  which  was  necessary  before  the 
human  mind  could  think  its  way  clear  to  that  great- 
est of  all  achievements  of  nineteenth-century 
science,  the  formulation  of  the  theory  of  evolution 
as  a  scientific  hypothesis  capable  of  demonstration 
on  a  basis  of  observed  facts. 

An  event  so  great  in  the  history  of  science,  so 
vital  to  the  philosophy  of  social  progress,  could 
not  occur  unheralded.  The  way  had  been  pre- 
pared through  centuries  of  thought,  groping  slow- 
ly but  surely  through  the  maze  of  phenomena,  re- 
ceiving new  light  with  each  discovery  of  science, 
and  new  opportunity  for  observation  with  each 
advance  of  civilization.  Some  vague  conception 
of  the  theory  of  evolution,  or  the  gradual  unfold- 
ing of  the  universe  of  matter  and  of  the  forms  of 
life  which  it  contains,  had  been  held  by  the  ancient 
Greeks.  But  upon  a  subject  so  vast  in  its  sweep, 
so  endless  in  its  ramifications,  so  bewildering  in 
the  variety  of  phenomena  involved, — upon  such 


320  English  Leadership 

a  subject  it  is  inconceivable  that  any  scientific 
hypothesis  could  be  formed  and  demonstrated 
until  all  the  other  great  branches  of  science  had 
been  sufficiently  developed  to  be  able  to  contrib- 
ute, each  its  due  share,  to  the  great  body  of  ob- 
served facts  which  alone  could  form  a  sound  basis 
for  so  sweeping  an  hypothesis.  That  stage  in  the 
advance  of  scientific  thought  was  not  reached  until 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  idea  of  evolution,  however,  as  suggested 
by  the  Greeks  first  reappeared  upon  the  scene  of 
modern  scientific  thought  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Up  to  that  time  not  only  the 
great  mass  of  the  people,  but  scientists  and  phil- 
osophers as  well,  had  accepted  the  ancient  Hebrew 
account  of  a  special  and  divine  creation.  The 
date  of  this  event  which  had  been  variously  esti- 
mated by  the  great  church  fathers,  had,  in  the 
days  of  Cromwell,  been  fixed  "with  laudable  pre- 
cision," by  Archbishop  Usher,  who  assigned  it  to 
Friday,  October  28,  4004,  B.  C.  The  matter  was 
accordingly  regarded — by  the  theologians  at  least 
— as  finally  settled;  it  is  only  within  the  last  half 
century  that  coercion  of  belief  on  this  point,  from 
ecclesiastical  authority,  has  been  rendered  fruit- 
less by  the  advance  of  scientific  knowledge. 

The  first  serious  attempt  to  establish  a  new  con- 


English  Scientific  Thought     321 

ception  of  the  formation  of  the  earth  had  been 
made  by  a  Frenchman,  Buffon,  in  1749;  but  he 
had  been  most  summarily  compelled  to  retract  his 
hypothesis  and  affirm  that  he  believed  implicitly 
in  the  Biblical  account.  Later,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  another  Frenchman, 
Laplace,  as  we  have  seen,  put  forth  his  Nebular 
hypothesis,  which  in  its  turn  was  also  denounced 
by  theologians;  nevertheless  by  the  profound  im- 
pression which  it  made  upon  scientific  thought  in 
emphasizing  the  idea  of  a  gradual  evolution  or 
development  of  the  physical  universe,  it  prepared 
the  way  for  a  similar  conception  of  evolution  in 
the  realm  of  living  forms. 

Meanwhile  the  attack  upon  the  Scriptural  ac- 
count of  creation  developed  from  another  quite 
unexpected  quarter.  In  consequence  of  the  deeper 
mining  made  possible  by  the  use  of  steam  pumps 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
had  been  much  speculation  as  to  the  origin  of  the 
various  types  of  rock  observed.  The  earliest 
theory — that  of  the  Frenchman,  Cuvier — at- 
tempted to  explain  stratification  and  fossil  re- 
mains by  imagining  a  series  of  catastrophes  of 
fire  or  water,  each  of  which  had  been  fatal  to  all 
living  creatures  and  had  been  followed  by  a  new 
exercise  of  creative  force,  the  last  of  which  sup- 


322  English  Leadership 

posedly  was  the  one  described  in  Genesis.  This 
theory  served  for  a  time  to  save  the  belief  in  di- 
vine intervention  through  a  series  of  special  crea- 
tions, a  series  of  processes  alien,  however,  to 
those  of  every-day  experience.  It  was  but  natural 
that  such  an  explanation  would  not  appeal  to  the 
English  mind,  the  doubting  Thomas  of  science, 
which  demanded  some  theory  which  could  be  ex- 
plained on  the  basis  of  the  ordinary  processes 
which  could  still  be  seen  in  operation.  Such  an 
explanation,  now  known  as  the  "uniformitarian 
theory,"  was  put  forth  by  James  Hutton  in  the 
late  eighteenth  century;  but  it  was  not  until  the 
publication  in  1815  of  William  Smith's  "Map  of 
the  Strata  of  England  and  Wales,"  that  there  was 
established  a  basis  of  observed  fact  sufficiently, 
broad  and  sound  to  justify  acceptance  of  the  Hut- 
tonian  theory.  This  theory,  expounded  by  Sir 
Charles  Lyell  in  his  "Principles  of  Geology" 
(1830),  attributed  stratification  to  the  deposition 
of  material  by  the  action  of  seas  and  rivers  and 
other  natural  agencies  acting  through  long  periods 
of  time.  By  comparison  of  the  fossil  remains  of 
plants  and  animals  found  in  different  layers  of 
rock,  geologists  were  then  able  to  classify  the 
rocks  and  determine  their  chronological  sequence. 
From  these  facts  in  turn  it  became  evident  that  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     323 

gradual  formation  of  the  rocks  had  been  accom- 
panied by  an  ascending  series  of  plant  and  animal 
types;  and  furthermore,  that  the  period  of  time 
required  for  these  transformations  was  infinitely 
greater  than  had  ever  been  conjectured.  In  con- 
sequence of  Lyell's  exposition  of  this  "uniformi- 
tarian"  theory  of  Hutton's,  the  whole  science  of 
geology,  with  its  amazing  revelations  of  the  great 
age  of  the  earth,  was  brought  into  being.  Thus 
had  been  established  by  the  English  mind,  during 
the  first  third  of  the  nineteenth  century,  that 
science  which,  apart  from  biology,  was  to  do  more 
than  any  other  toward  overturning  false  concep- 
tions of  chronology  and  opening  up  new  vistas  in 
the  history  of  the  formation  of  the  earth  and  of 
the  development  of  living  forms  upon  that  earth. 
But  before  an  adequate  working  hypothesis 
could  be  formulated  in  explanation  of  that  de- 
velopment of  life,  another  step  was  necessary, — 
the  transformation  of  the  "natural  history"  hobby 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  into 
the  biological  sciences  of  the  nineteenth.  We  have 
already  noted  the  work  done  by  Nehemiah  Grew 
and  by  John  Ray,  late  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
in  laying  the  foundation  of  botany  and  zoology. 
The  greatest  of  the  naturalists,  however,  the  man 
whose  work  marks  the  transition  from  mere  ac- 


324  English  Leadership 

cumulated  information  to  the  beginnings  of  a  sys- 
tematic and  organized  knowledge  of  the  phenom- 
ena of  life,  was  the  Swedish  scientist,  Carl  Lin- 
naeus, whom  Huxley  characterized  as  "the  su- 
preme law-giver  of  living  nature."  But  though 
Linnaeus  was  not  an  Englishman,  his  work,  never- 
theless, was  based  upon  that  of  the  Englishman, 
Ray.  About  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
Linnaeus  had  announced  his  famous  classification 
of  plants  and  animals,  in  which  he  assigned  man  to 
the  highest  place  in  an  ascending  series  of  plant 
and  animal  species, — to  the  natural  order,  class 
mammalia,  order  of  primates,  genus  homo.  The 
work  of  Linnaeus  was  followed  half  a  century 
later  by  that  of  Baron  Cuvier  of  France,  whose 
"Animal  Kingdom"  (1818),  basing  classification 
upon  internal  as  well  as  external  resemblances, 
formed  the  point  of  departure  for  all  subsequent 
zoological  speculation.  Both  Linnaeus  and  Cu- 
vier had  noted  the  close  resemblances  between  vari- 
ous species,  and  their  classifications  reveal  an  as- 
cending series,  but  neither  of  them  had  any  theory 
to  offer,  other  than  that  of  innumerable  special 
creations,  which  would  account  for  the  origin  of 
species.  That  work  remained  for  Charles  Dar- 
win. 

By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 


English  Scientific  Thought     325 

time  was  ripe  for  the  appearance  of  such  a  theory. 
The  idea  of  evolution,  as  has  been  said  before, 
was  not  a  new  one.  But  in  the  form  suggested  by 
the  Greeks,  and  reappearing  occasionally  down 
through  the  Middle  Ages  it  signified  merely  a 
gradual  process  in  the  formation  of  the  universe 
and  in  the  development  of  the  forms  of  life.  In 
this  same  sense  the  word  "evolution"  first  ap- 
peared in  the  scientific  world  during  the  eighteenth 
century,  as  a  term  to  denote  the  gradual  unfold- 
ment  of  an  organism  from  a  miniature  embryo, 
complete  from  the  beginning  in  all  its  parts.  This 
application  of  the  idea  of  evolution  had  been 
made  by  the  opponents  of  William  Harvey's 
theory  of  "epigenesis," — the  theory  that  the 
growth  of  the  organism  takes  place  by  the  suc- 
cessive addition  of  parts.  In  the  resulting  con- 
troversy, "epigenesis"  won  out  over  "evolution"; 
but  the  word  "evolution"  was  still  retained  in  its 
more  general  sense  to  signify  as  before  the  grad- 
ual unfolding  of  the  universe  rather  than  a  six-day 
act  of  special  creation.  By  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  idea  of  evolution  had  already 
become  practically  established  in  all  the  physical 
sciences,  partly  as  a  result  of  Laplace's  Nebular 
hypothesis,  partly  through  the  work  of  Stokes  in 
spectrum  analysis,  but  more  conclusively  through 


326  English  Leadership 

the  work  of  James  Hutton,  William  Smith  and 
Charles  Lyell,  in  the  development  of  the  "uniform- 
itarian"  theory  of  the  structure  of  the  earth.  In 
the  field  of  biological  thought,  too,  the  French- 
man Lamarck  had  in  1809  advanced  his  theory 
of  evolution  as  based  upon  the  adaptation  of  the 
organism  to  its  environment,  and  of  the  trans- 
mission of  acquired  characteristics.  But  it  re- 
mained for  Charles  Darwin  to  fix  the  meaning 
of  the  word  "evolution"  as  we  understand  it  to- 
day, "the  transmutation  of  species,"  as  opposed 
to  a  series  of  innumerable  "special  creations"  for 
each  and  every  organism. 

Darwin's  great  achievement,  therefore,  was  not 
the  mere  suggestion  of  the  idea  of  evolution.  His 
work,  rather,  was  the  formulation  of  the  theory 
as  a  scientific  hypothesis  capable  of  demonstration 
on  a  basis  of  observed  fact.  For  some  twenty 
years  he  wrestled  with  the  problem,  summoning 
for  its  solution  an  amazing  range  of  facts,  drawn 
from  every  conceivable  source,  from  a  comparison 
of  fossil  remains  to  a  study  of  the  whole  range  of 
living  forms;  from  the  simplest  rules  of  deliberate 
selection  followed  by  the  farmer  in  breeding  do- 
mestic animals,  to  the  unconscious  natural  selec- 
tion which  was  suggested  to  him  by  a  chance  read- 
ing of  Malthus'  observations  upon  the  tendency 


English  Scientific  Thought     327 

of  population  to  increase  at  a  rate  much  more 
rapid  than  that  of  the  means  of  subsistence. 
Throughout  all  this  immense  accumulation  of  ob- 
served fact,  Darwin  was  the  first  to  see  a  single 
principle  continuously  acting.  Having  observed 
that  throughout  all  nature  the  number  of  young 
born  was  far  in  excess  of  the  number  which  could 
subsist  upon  the  available  food  supply,  he  ac- 
counted for  the  origin  of  species  by  assuming 
that,  through  a  slow  process  of  natural  selection, 
there  would  survive  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
only  those  individuals  of  a  species  which  were  best 
adapted  to  their  environment  through  some  fa- 
vorable variation  of  structure  or  of  function. 
Through  the  advantage  gained  by  the  occurrence 
of  a  useful  variation  a  series  of  organisms  would 
then,  through  the  course  of  ages,  develop  per- 
manent modifications,  and  thus  exhibit  the  variety 
of  characteristics  which  distinguish  the  surviving 
species.  This  is  Darwin's  theory  of  evolution  as 
substantiated  by  the  principle  of  natural  selection 
upon  which  he  placed  so  strong  an  emphasis.  By 
his  establishment  of  this  principle,  he  laid  the 
foundation  for  a  new  and  vastly  broader  study  of 
organic  structure,  making  it  possible  to  account 
for  more  complex  organisms  as  the  result  of  a 
series  of  useful  variations,  and  of  simpler  organ- 


328  English  Leadership 

Isms  as  survivals  of  those  earlier  forms  which  con- 
stitute the  common  ancestry  of  both.  But  not  only 
did  he  set  forth  an  explanation  of  that  continuous 
process  of  evolution  through  which  the  highest 
forms  of  life  have  been  developed  from  formless 
protoplasm,  the  simplest  living  matter, — that  in 
itself  was  an  achievement  great  enough  to  win  for 
him  a  willing  recognition  as  the  greatest  scientific 
thinker  of  the  nineteenth  century, — not  only  did 
his  work  place  the  science  of  biology  upon  a  new 
and  permanent  foundation,  but  it  also  wrought  a 
revolution  in  the  whole  course  of  scientific  thought, 
the  effects  of  which  are  altogether  beyond  our 
calculation.  The  application  of  his  theory  has 
raised  Innumerable  questions  and  problems;  the 
nature  and  causes  of  variation,  the  question  of 
heredity  and  of  educablllty,  of  transmission  of 
instincts  and  acquired  characteristics,  the  question 
of  hybridization  and  mendelism,  of  pangenesis 
and  eugenics, — these  are  but  a  few  of  the  many 
problems,  storm-centers  of  controversy  still,  grow- 
ing out  of  one  phase  or  another  of  the  theory 
advanced  by  Darwin.  Some  of  these  investiga- 
tions are  even  tending,  in  themselves,  to  be  classed 
as  separate  sciences  within  the  general  field  of 
biological  research.  But  apart  from  any  dis- 
cussion of  these  problems,  which  would  lead  too 


English  Scientific  Thought     329 

far  afield,  there  can  be  no  question  of  Darwin's 
supreme  position  as  leader  of  the  ever-increasing 
host  of  earnest  investigators  who  are  extending 
the  realm  of  biology  as  a  science  over  regions 
which  before  had  been  shrouded  in  the  fogs  of 
superstition  and  of  mysticism. 

That  such  a  theory  of  the  development  of  life, 
with  all  its  Implications,  would  result  in  nothing 
less  than  a  complete  revolution  in  modern  thought 
Is  inevitable.  That  it  would  meet  with  fierce  ob- 
jection was  a  matter  of  course.  But  as  John 
Tyndall  has  pointed  out,  Darwin's  "vast  resources 
enable  him  to  cope  with  objections  started  by  him- 
self and  others,  so  as  to  leave  the  final  impression 
upon  the  reader's  mind  that,  if  they  be  not  com- 
pletely answered,  they  certainly  are  not  fatal. 
Their  negative  force  being  thus  destroyed,  you 
are  free  to  be  influenced  by  the  vast  positive  mass 
of  evidence  he  Is  able  to  bring  before  you.  This 
largeness  of  knowledge  and  readiness  of  resource 
render  Mr.  Darwin  the  most  terrible  of  antago- 
nists. Accomplished  naturalists  have  leveled  heavy 
and  sustained  criticism  against  him — not  always 
with  the  view  of  fairly  weighing  his  theory,  but 
with  the  express  Intention  of  exposing  Its  weak 
points  only.  This  does  not  irritate  him.  He 
treats  every  objection  with  a  soberness  and  thor- 


330  English  Leadership 

oughness  which  even  Bishop  Butler  might  be 
proud  to  imitate,  surrounding  each  fact  with  its 
appropriate  detail,  placing  it  in  its  proper  rela- 
tions, and  usually  giving  it  a  significance  which, 
as  long  as  it  was  kept  isolated,  failed  to  appear. 
This  is  done  without  a  trace  of  ill-temper.  He 
moves  over  the  subject  with  the  passionless 
strength  of  a  glacier;  and  the  grinding  of  the 
rocks  is  not  always  without  a  counterpart  in  the 
logical  pulverization  of  the  objector.  But  though 
in  handling  this  mighty  theme  all  passion  has  been 
stilled,  there  is  an  emotion  of  the  intellect  incident 
to  the  discernment  of  new  truth  which  often  colors 
and  warms  the  pages  of  Mr.  Darwin.  His  success 
has  been  great;  and  this  implies  not  only  the 
solidity  of  his  work,  but  the  preparedness  of  the 
public  mind  for  such  a  revelation." 

The  most  immediate  effect  of  Darwin's  thought 
is  seen  in  his  influence  upon  the  philosophy  of  his 
contemporary,  Herbert  Spencer,  who  was  already 
formulating  his  evolutionary  theory  of  knowledge, 
when  Darwin's  work  came  to  his  attention.  What 
Darwin  had  done  for  the  physical  world,  Spencer 
had  set  himself  to  do  for  the  world  of  mental 
phenomena.  What,  he  asked  himself,  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  growth  of  that  power  which  has  cul- 
minated in  Reason?     How  may  the  various  or- 


English  Scientific  Thought     331 

ders  of  mind  be  accounted  for?  Accepting  the 
work  of  the  physicist  and  of  the  physiologist, 
Spencer  sought  to  build,  upon  these  as  a  founda- 
tion, a  system  of  psychology.  He  recognized  two 
obvious  factors  in  the  problem,  the  organism  and 
its  environment;  between  these  he  saw  going  on  a 
continuous  interaction  which  led  him  to  define  life 
as  "a  continuous  adjustment  of  internal  relations 
to  external  relations."  From  a  vaguely  diffused 
sensitiveness  of  tissue  in  the  lowest  organism  there 
has  been  a  gradual  development  of  the  five  senses, 
which  in  turn  modify  the  conduct  of  the  organism 
in  its  adjustment  to  its  environment,  both  through 
extent  in  space  and  through  extent  in  time.  There 
is  also  a  corresponding  increase  in  complexity  of 
sensation  and  of  conduct  as  development  is  traced 
through  the  orders  of  brute  life  up  to  the  human 
mind.  In  the  life  of  the  individual,  sense  impres- 
sions constituting  its  experience  of  the  external 
world  are  stamped  upon  the  brain,  thus  forming 
states  of  consciousness  and  determining  all  the 
mental  processes  of  perception,  memory,  and  so 
on.  Repeated  sensations  producing  the  same  re- 
peated reaction,  combined  with  hereditary  trans- 
mission, lead  to  the  formation  of  instincts.  Two 
or  more  phenomena  occurring  invariably  together 
are  stamped  to  equal  depths  and  result  in  ideas  in- 


332  English  Leadership 

dissolubly  connected,  thus  determining  the  "law 
of  inseparable  association."  Just  here  Spencer  de- 
parts from  the  view  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  who 
would  recognize  only  the  registered  experiences 
of  the  individual.  Spencer's  view  maintains  that 
there  exists  in  the  human  brain  at  birth  a  power 
of  organizing  race  experience  previous  to  its  in- 
dividual experience;  in  other  words  the  human 
brain,  he  says,  is  the  "organized  register  of  in- 
finitely numerous  experiences  received  during  the 
evolution  of  life,  or  rather  during  the  evolution 
of  that  series  of  organisms  through  which  the 
human  organism  has  been  reached.  The  effects 
of  the  most  uniform  and  frequent  of  these  expe- 
riences have  been  successfully  bequeathed,  prin- 
cipal and  interest,  and  have  slowly  mounted  to 
that  high  intelligence  which  lies  latent  in  the  brain 
of  the  infant.  Thus  it  happens  that  the  European 
inherits  from  twenty  to  thirty  cubic  inches  more 
of  brain  than  the  Papuan.  Thus  it  happens  that 
faculties,  as  of  music,  which  scarcely  exist  in  some 
inferior  races,  become  congenital  in  superior  ones. 
Thus  it  happens  that  out  of  savages  unable  to 
count  up  to  the  number  of  their  fingers,  and  speak- 
ing a  language  containing  only  nouns  and  verbs, 
arise  at  length  our  Newtons  and  our  Shake- 
speares." 


English  Scientific  Thought     333 

Neither  Darwin  nor  Spencer  had  any  theory 
to  offer  as  to  the  origination  of  life.  Nor  did 
they  attempt  to  explain  the  nature  of  the  external 
world,  from  which  all  our  sensations  are  received; 
that,  in  the  words  of  J.  S.  Mill,  is  "the  great 
battleground  of  metaphysics."  Spencer  does  not, 
as  Berkeley  would,  deny  its  existence,  but  main- 
tains rather  that  it  is  an  outside  entity,  the  real 
nature  of  which  we  can  never  know.  "In  fact," 
as  Tyndall  says,  "the  whole  process  of  evolution 
is  the  manifestation  of  a  Power  absolutely  inscrut- 
able to  the  intellect  of  man.  As  little  in  our  day 
as  in  the  days  of  Job  can  man,  by  searching,  find 
this  Power  out.  Considered  fundamentally,  it  is 
by  the  operation  of  an  insoluble  mystery  that  life 
is  evolved,  species  differentiated,  and  mind  un- 
folded from  their  prepotent  elements  in  the  im- 
measurable past." 

It  was  inevitable  that  such  a  theory  of  life  would 
turn  the  whole  course  of  modern  science,  philos- 
ophy and  religion  into  entirely  new  channels. 
While  the  discoveries  of  Davy  and  of  Faraday,  of 
Morse  and  Stephenson  and  Bell,  were  working 
a  complete  transformation  in  the  outward  aspect 
of  the  world,  Darwin's  theory  and  philosophy 
were  working  a  similar  transformation  in  the  in- 
ner life  of  man.    Every  phase  of  modern  thought, 


334  English  Leadership 

— from  biology,  psychology,  and  anthropology, 
through  all  the  present  array  of  nascent  sciences 
on  the  one  hand,  to  history  and  literature,  philos- 
ophy and  religion  on  the  other, — every  phase  of 
modern  thought  has  felt  the  impulse  given  by  the 
"Origin  of  Species";  for  it  supplied  that  dynamic 
element  in  our  modern  evolutionary  theory  which 
has  made  possible  for  us  to-day  a  new  and  vastly 
greater  conception  of  the  possibility  of  human 
progress  than  that  inherent  in  the  old  idea  of  the 
"perfectibility  of  man."  As  Professor  Dewey  in 
his  "Influence  of  Darwin  on  Philosophy"  has 
pointed  out,  the  very  title,  "Origin  of  Species,"  is 
a  declaration  of  the  modern  intellectual  revolt 
against  traditional  assumptions  of  an  age  already 
long  past, — "the  assumption  of  the  superiority  of 
the  fixed  and  final."  The  whole  superstructure  of 
all  classical  philosophy  based  upon  the  idea  of 
fixity,  and  of  the  old  theological  dogma  based 
upon  a  series  of  "special  creations," — all  this  has 
gone  down  in  the  general  demolition  wrought  by 
the  introduction  of  the  evolutionary  view  of  life. 
Shorn  of  the  old  philosophies  and  dogmas, 
feeling  the  old  foundations  crumbling,  doubting 
the  efficacy  of  the  new  philosophy,  the  Pragmatism 
of  William  James,  or  the  Creative  Evolution  of 
Henri  Bergson,  humanity  is  asking  over  and  over 


English  Scientific  Thought    335 

again  the  old,  old  question,  "Is  there  a  God? 
What  is  God?"  The  question  is  being  asked  not 
only  by  the  "intellectuals,"  but  also  and  far  more 
poignantly  by  the  great  masses  of  the  people,  who, 
untrained  in  philosophical  subtleties,  feel  the  need 
of  some  practical  working  faith  to  replace  their 
broken  images.  And  many  and  varied  are  the 
answers  given  to  that  insistent  cry  of  a  bewildered, 
struggle-torn  humanity.  From  one  extreme  comes 
the  grim  reply  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  with  his 
supreme  contempt  for  the  Christian  conception  of 
an  atoning,  self-sacrificing  God;  with  his  violent 
assertion  of  an  uncompromising  naturalism,  his 
doctrine  of  self-realization  and  of  a  brutal  indi- 
vidualism gone  mad;  but  Nietzschism  is  a  symp- 
tom rather  than  a  solution.  From  the  opposite 
direction  comes  the  answer  to  Leo  Tolstoy  with 
his  visionary  theory,  his  almost  pathetic  reliance 
upon  a  God  of  passive  non-resistance.  From 
another  quarter  still  are  heard  the  assurances  of 
theosophists,  offering  to  a  haste-driven  world  the 
calm  and  peace  of  an  Oriental  faith. 

But  one  of  the  most  characteristic  of  modern 
religious  reactions  "against  the  despotism  of  fact" 
imposed  by  natural  science,  perhaps  the  most  sig- 
nificant in  its  emphasis  on  the  idea  of  universal 
brotherhood,  and  in  its  power  to  stem  the  tide  of 


336  English  Leadership 

pessimism  by  galvanizing  flagging  human  energy 
into  positive  action,  is  the  rise  of  Christian  Sci- 
ence, which  its  founder,  Mary  Baker  Eddy,  de- 
fined as  "the  law  of  God,  the  law  of  Good,  inter- 
preting and  demonstrating  the  divine  Principle 
and  rule  of  universal  harmony."  God,  according 
to  the  Christian  Science  doctrine,  is  "incorporeal, 
divine,  supreme,  infinite.  Mind,  Spirit,  Soul,  Prin- 
ciple, Life,  Truth,  Love.  All  causation  is  Mind, 
and  every  effect  a  mental  phenomenon."  "It  re- 
sults from  this  definition,"  says  one  of  its  ex- 
pounders, William  Denison  McCrackan,  "that 
the  basis  of  Christian  Science,  the  Principle  of  its 
healing  is  wholly  metaphysical,  i.e.,  beyond  the 
realm  of  physical  sense  perception;  that  this  Prin- 
ciple has  no  material  form  or  body,  is  the  highest 
possible  authority,  and  is  boundless  in  power  and 
existence.  Truth  defines  God  as  an  established 
fixed  reality;  Love  sums  up  within  itself  every 
quality  of  good,  such  as  tenderness,  purity  and 
justice,  and  this  final  synonym  proclaims  that  God 
attracts  and  rules  on  the  basis  of  the  immutable 
law  of  mercy.  It  teaches  first  of  all  the  absolute 
goodness  of  God  and  as  a  consequence  the  essen- 
tial goodness  of  man  made  in  God's  image 
and  likeness.  .  .  .  The  immediate  consequences, 
therefore,  of  the  acceptance  of  the  teachings  of 


English  Scientific  Thought     337 

Christian  Science,  is  to  establish  a  hopeful  outlook 
upon  life,  to  found  the  expectation  of  good  upon 
definite  facts  capable  of  proof  by  all  mankind.  A 
further  effect  is  to  lessen  fear,  apprehension  of  the 
future,  and  worry,  to  dissipate  the  mystery  and 
mysticism  generally  associated  with  spiritual  mat- 
ters and  to  bring  them  into  every-day  affairs  as 
available  and  regenerative;  to  transform  religion 
from  a  matter  principally  of  preaching  or  cere- 
monial into  a  matter  principally  of  practice  and 
regeneration  with  its  proof  and  rewards  made  ap- 
parent now  instead  of  in  a  future  state  of  exist- 
ence only.  It  is  the  supreme  merit  of  Christian 
Science,"  its  expounder  continues,  "that  it  clarifies 
the  true  position  of  God  in  human  consciousness 
and  dignifies  the  essential  nature  of  man  with  the 
glory  of  his  sonship  with  God,  The  necessary 
consequence  of  this  scientific  understanding  is  to 
produce  healing  In  its  fullest  and  broadest  sense, 
both  mental,  moral  and  physical;  to  bring  about 
the  transformation  of  the  body  through  the  renew- 
ing of  the  mind." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Christian  Sci- 
ence movement  has  in  one  generation  enormously 
increased  the  number  of  followers  of  Christian 
teachings.  Its  power  has  been  especially  marked 
in   English-speaking  countries   and   is   as   rapidly 


338  English  Leadership 

spreading  throughout  the  world.  Whatever  may 
be  the  judgment  passed  upon  it  by  human  experi- 
ence in  generations  yet  to  come,  the  movement  is 
nevertheless  most  significant  as  an  illustration  of 
the  growing  social  consciousness  of  universal 
brotherhood,  and  of  the  essential  unity  of  man 
on  the  plane  of  his  higher  life. 

This  conception,  expressed  by  "the  brotherhood 
of  man,"  has  already  played  a  great  role  in  the 
cultural  advancement  of  man.  Hitherto  the 
force  it  has  had,  as  Professor  Ritter  points  out, 
"has  been  almost  wholly  in  its  appeal  to  the  emo- 
tional side  of  man's  nature  and  very  little  in  its 
appeal  to  the  rational  side.  Hitherto  'the  golden 
rule'  has  had  little  or  no  positive  unqualified  sup- 
port from  the  side  of  reason  and  science.  It  has 
indeed  been  too  widely  assumed  both  by  men  of 
science  and  men  of  religion  and  ethics,  that  these 
great  conceptions  are  the  exclusive  province  of 
religion.  Such  a  view  seems  to  be  the  chief 
ground  on  which  Tolstoy,  Brunetiere,  and  other 
intense  lovers  of  mankind  have  based  their  indict- 
ment of  modern  science  as  having  proved  its  in- 
ability to  contribute  anything  essential  to  human 
welfare  and  happiness.  The  province  of  human 
biology  is  to  take  the  very  widely  observed  phe- 
nomenon of  fellow-feeling  as  it  takes  any  other 


English  Scientific  Thought     339 

fact  pertaining  to  man,  and  see  what  can  be  made 
of  it.  Such  a  study  discovers,  for  one  thing,  that 
fellow-feeling  is  the  extreme  term  of  the  integra- 
tive series  of  human  evolution.  We  must  recog- 
nize that  to  the  affectional  elements  in  human 
brotherhood,  mighty  in  power  but  often  fitful  in 
action,  there  Is  added  a  rational  element  which, 
though  less  applicable  to  the  rank  and  file  of  men 
and  less  intense  in  action,  is  more  solid  and  trust- 
worthy and  enduring.  .  .  .  On  its  integrative 
side,  progress  in  human  culture  consists  in  pre- 
serving a  balance  between  the  affective  and 
rational  elements  of  the  brotherhood  of  man. 
From  the  standpoint  of  biological  evolution, 
progress  in  civilization  may  be  characterized  as 
the  differentiation  and  intensification  of  love  and 
intellect,  and  of  the  intellectualizing  of  love  and 
the  affectionizing  of  intellect.  What  we  need  is 
less  a  city  of  Brotherly  Love  than  a  Land  of 
Brotherly  Wisdom,  a  Sophodelphia.  The  world's 
prayer  at  this  time  should  be  for  an  understanding 
of  head  and  heart.  Therethrough  alone  runs  the 
road  to  any  sort  of  human  brotherhood  and  love, 
for  which  strong,  active  men  can  care.  Such  a 
course  would  fill  millions  of  persons  with  an  en- 
thusiasm that  would  be  irresistible  and  permanent 
because  sustained  by  reason  as  well  as  by  emotion. 


340  English  Leadership 

It  is  this  same  idealism,  tliis  same  consciousness 
of  social  ends,  which  has  been  so  marked  a  char- 
acteristic of  the  course  of  English  scientific 
thought.  It  is  in  order  to  achieve  those  ends 
that  it  has  struggled  so  determinedly  to  be  free. 
It  was  that  same  idealism  that  Huxley  had  in 
mind  when  he  declared  that  "science  prospers  ex- 
actly in  proportion  as  it  is  religious,"  It  is  that 
same  passion  for  serving  social  ends  through  in- 
tellectual freedom  which  inspired  Tyndall's  mem- 
orable address  at  Belfast;  his  words  on  that  occa- 
sion are  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  high 
seriousness  of  English  scientific  thought:  "Mr. 
Buckle  sought  to  detach  intellectual  achievement 
from  moral  force.  He  gravely  erred;  for  with- 
out moral  force  to  whip  it  into  action,  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  intellect  would  be  poor  indeed.  .  .  . 
I  would  set  forth  equally  the  inexorable  advance 
of  man's  understanding  in  the  path  of  knowledge, 
and  the  unquenchable  claims  of  his  emotional  na- 
ture which  the  understanding  can  never  satisfy. 
The  world  embraces  not  only  a  Newton,  but  a 
Shakespeare;  not  only  a  Boyle,  but  a  Raphael;  not 
only  a  Kant,  but  a  Beethoven;  not  only  a  Darwin, 
but  a  Carlyle.  Not  in  each  of  these,  but  in  all, 
is  human  nature  whole.  They  are  not  opposed, 
but   supplementary;   not   mutually   exclusive,   but 


English  Scientific  Thought     341 

reconcilable.  And  if,  still  unsatisfied,  the  human 
mind,  with  the  yearning  of  a  pilgrim  for  his 
distant  home,  will  turn  to  the  mystery  from  which 
it  has  emerged,  seeking  so  to  fashion  it  as  to  give 
unity  to  thought  and  faith — so  long  as  this  is 
done,  not  only  without  intolerance  or  bigotry  of 
any  kind,  but  with  the  enlightened  recognition  that 
ultimate  fixity  of  conception  is  here  unattainable, 
and  that  each  succeeding  age  must  be  held  free  to 
fashion  the  mystery  in  accordance  with  its  own 
needs,  then,  in  opposition  to  all  the  restrictions  of 
Materialism,  I  would  affirm  this  to  be  a  field 
for  the  noblest  exercise  of  what,  in  contrast  with 
the  knowing  faculties,  may  be  called  the  creative 
faculties  of  man.  Here,  however,  I  must  quit  a 
theme  too  great  for  me  to  handle,  but  which 
will  be  handled  by  the  loftiest  minds  ages  after 
you  and  I,  like  streaks  of  morning  cloud,  shall 
have  melted  Into  the  infinite  azure  of  the  past." 
Such  then  is  the  ideal  of  a  conscious  social  prog- 
ress set  before  the  world  by  men  of  science  among 
English-speaking  peoples.  Never  before  in  the 
history  of  civilization  has  there  been  so  marked 
a  tendency  to  synthetize  the  knowledge  gained 
from  all  fields  of  scientific  thought  into  one  grand 
science  of  human  welfare,  whose  supreme  object 


342  pnglish  Leadership 

will  be  not  merely  the  joy  derived  from  discovery 
of  yet  greater  fields  of  knowledge  but  also,  and 
far  more  potently,  the  satisfaction  of  man's  high- 
est aspirations  through  the  application  of  scien- 
tific knowledge  to  the  perplexing  problems  of 
social  readjustment.  Such  was  the  vision  of  that 
first  of  English  men  of  science,  Roger  Bacon. 
Such  was  the  ideal  set  by  his  greater  namesake, 
Francis  Bacon.  Such  is  the  possibility  latent  in 
the  evolutionary  view  of  a  continuous  advance 
toward  ever  greater  heights  of  human  achieve- 
ment. Such,  too,  is  the  hope  held  out  by  men 
of  science  in  all  lines  of  earnest  research, — a  hope 
the  promise  of  whose  fulfilment  may  be  seen  in 
the  work  of  organizations  like  the  Smithsonian 
Institute,  founded  on  American  soil  by  a  man  of 
English  birth  for  the  enlightenment  of  all  man- 
kind. In  order  that  we  may  attain  that  intel- 
lectual liberty  upon  which  all  social  progress  ulti- 
mately depends,  science  must  be  free  to  burst  the 
bonds  of  prejudice  and  ignorance  and  set  new 
standards  for  the  race.  Not  only  must  science  be 
unfettered.  If  she  would  accomplish  for  man- 
kind that  social  readjustment  which  her  men  of 
vision  promise,  she  must  find  cooperation  and  sup- 
port from  the  emotional  impulses  of  man.     There 


English  Scientific  Thought     343 

must  be  no  further  warfare  between  science  and 
religion.  Both  must  work  together  toward  a 
common  social  end — the  betterment  of  man's 
estate. 


THE  ENGLISH  GIFT  TO  WORLD 
LITERATURE 


Grace  F.  Caldwell 


THE  ENGLISH  GIFT  TO  WORLD 
LITERATURE 

On  the  Fourth  of  July,  191 8,  there  was  held 
in  London  a  meeting  most  significant  in  the  course 
of  human  freedom, — a  meeting  similar  in  import 
to  that  of  the  Barons  at  Runnymede,  or  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  in  Independence  Hall,  the  sign- 
ing of  the  Federal  Constitution,  or  the  taking  of 
the  Tennis  Court  Oath.  It  was  the  meeting  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  Fellowship,  called  to  celebrate, 
for  the  first  time  on  English  soil,  the  142nd  anni- 
versary of  the  Declaration  of  American  Indepen- 
dence. On  that  day  all  the  English-speaking 
peoples  of  the  earth  joined  hearts  and  hopes  in 
commemoration  of  an  event  which  no  longer 
savored  of  hostility  and  defiance  on  the  one  side, 
nor  of  grief  and  regret  on  the  other,  but  rather 
had  come  to  symbolize  a  common  heritage  of  free- 
dom, a  mutual  pledge  of  affection  and  cooperation 
toward  a  common  Ideal. 

The  world  will  longer  remember  the  words 
spoken  on  that  occasion  by  Mr.  Winston  Church- 

347 


348  English  Leadership 

111:  "The  Declaration  of  Independence  is  not  only 
an  American  document.  It  follows  on  the  Magna 
Carta  and  the  Bill  of  Rights  as  the  third  great 
title-deed  on  which  the  liberties  of  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  are  founded.  By  it  we  lost  an 
empire,  but  by  it  we  also  preserved  an  Empire.  By 
applying  its  principles  and  learning  its  lesson  we 
have  maintained  our  communion  with  the  power- 
ful Commonwealths  which  our  children  have  es- 
tablished beyond  the  seas.  .  .  .  Deep  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people  of  these  islands  lay  the  de- 
sire to  be  truly  reconciled  before  all  men  and  all 
history  with  their  kindred  across  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  to  blot  out  the  reproaches  and  redeem  the 
blunders  of  a  bygone  age,  to  dwell  once  more  in 
spirit  with  them,  to  stand  once  more  in  battle  at 
their  side,  to  create  once  more  a  union  of  hearts,  to 
write  once  more  a  history  in  common.  That  was 
our  heart's  desire.  It  seemed  utterly  unattain- 
able, but  it  has  come  to  pass.  ...  So  let  us  cele- 
brate to-day  not  only  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence; let  us  proclaim  the  true  comradeship 
of  Britain  and  America,  to  stand  together  till  the 
work  is  done,  in  all  perils,  in  all  difficulties,  and 
at  all  costs.  .  .  .  That  is  the  Declaration  of 
July,  191 8;  and,  to  quote  words  that  are  on  all 
American   lips   to-day,    'for   the   support   of  this 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     349 

declaration,  with  a  firm  reliance  on  the  protection 
of  Divine  Providence,  we  mutually  pledge  to  each 
other  our  lives,  our  fortunes  and  our  sacred 
honor;  " 

These  were  the  words  of  a  world-renowned 
Englishman,  spoken  on  time-honored  English  soil. 
Almost  at  the  same  hour  President  Wilson  was 
voicing  the  same  sentiments  from  the  sacred  slopes 
of  Mount  Vernon:  "What  we  seek  is  the  reign 
of  law,  based  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed 
and  sustained  by  the  organized  opinion  of  man- 
kind. These  great  ends  cannot  be  achieved  by 
debating  and  seeking  to  reconcile  and  accommo- 
date what  statesmen  may  wish  with  their  projects 
for  balance  of  power  and  national  opportunity. 
They  can  be  realized  only  by  the  determination 
of  what  the  thinking  people  of  the  world  desire, 
with  their  longing  hope  for  social  freedom  and 
opportunity.  I  can  fancy  that  the  air  of  this  place 
carries  the  accents  of  such  principles  with  a 
peculiar  kindness.  Here  were  started  forces 
which  the  great  nation  against  which  they  were 
primarily  directed  at  first  regarded  as  a  revolt 
against  its  rightful  authority,  but  which  it  has  long 
since  seen  to  have  been  a  step  in  the  liberation  of 
its  own  people  as  well  as  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States;  and  I  stand  here  now  to  speak — ' 


350  English  Leadership 

speak  proudly  and  with  confident  hope — of  the 
spread  of  this  revolt,  this  liberation,  to  the  great 
stage  of  the  world  itself!" 

This  revolt,  this  liberation, — an  aim  which  is 
nothing  other  than  the  spreading  of  the  spirit  of 
democracy, — this  is  the  mission  for  whose  fulfil- 
ment the  English-speaking  peoples  of  the  world, 
on  July  4,  191 8,  mutually  pledged  in  enduring 
brotherhood  their  lives,  their  fortunes,  and  their 
sacred  honor.  But  what  is  this  spirit  of  de- 
mocracy, and  how  may  it  be  fostered?  What 
ends  may  it  be  made  to  serve?  That  is  a  prob- 
lem to  the  solution  of  which  the  English  people 
set  themselves  many  centuries  ago.  How  far 
they  have  succeeded  in  the  fulfilment  of  their  self- 
imposed  task  can  be  judged  only  by  their  national 
experience.  And  that  national  experience  is  re- 
corded nowhere  more  adequately  and  forcefully 
than  in  their  literature.  We  see  in  English  sci- 
ence, law  and  government  its  rationalized  and  ab- 
stract record.  But  in  English  literature  we  find 
a  far  more  vital,  because  emotionalized  and  per- 
sonal, expression  of  the  spirit  of  the  nation, — that 
great  complex  of  elemental  feelings  which  have 
played  so  large  a  part  in  determining  its  career. 
"Let  me  make  the  ballads  of  a  nation  and  who  will 
may  make  its  laws."    If  we  would  know  the  spirit 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     351 

of  the  English  people,  we  must  search  its  litera- 
ture; and  English  literature  from  "Beowulf"  to 
Walt  Whitman  is  nothing  at  all  if  not  a  magnifi- 
cent chorus  whose  voices  echo,  through  the  halls  of 
time,  the  strains  of  a  national  anthem  whose  theme 
is  the  spirit  of  democracy.  That  anthem  is  the 
English  gift  to  world  literature. 

The  first  strains  of  that  anthem  were  heard, 
long  before  the  Magna  Carta,  far  back  in  those 
grim  dark  years  when  the  Anglo-Saxon  first  set 
foot  on  British  shores.  Deep-chested  and  huge- 
limbed,  with  dauntless  courage  and  fierce  resolu- 
tion, these  ancestors  of  the  modern  English  had 
braved  the  fierce  storms  of  the  Baltic  and  of  the 
North  Sea  in  order  to  find  a  new  home  more  at- 
tractive than  the  old.  They  had  come  from  the 
dismal  wastes  of  Northern  Europe  with  its  dull 
gray  blanket  of  chilling  fog,  and  its  tangled  forests 
dripping  with  rain, — a  land  swept  by  fierce  storms 
which  lashed  the  neighboring  sea  into  mountainous 
waves  and  drove  them  In  pitiless  fury  over  the 
marshy  and  sunken  coasts.  In  such  a  land  there 
was  no  place  for  the  weakling  or  the  coward; 
life  was  one  continuous  struggle  against  over- 
whelming odds ;  only  those  could  live  at  all  who 
lived  nobly  and  masterfully.  Coarse,  cruel  and 
pitiless   though    men    living   under    such    circum- 


352  English  Leadership 

stances  must  Inevitably  have  been,  they  were 
nevertheless  fit  men  to  found  a  new  nation;  for 
under  their  brutality  lay  immense  stores  of  un- 
wasted  energy,  and  an  altogether  undeveloped 
capacity  for  thought,  feeling  and  action,  which 
was  to  make  them  not  merely  warriors,  but  heroes 
and  conquerors,  founders  of  nations  and  builders 
of  empire.  It  was  men  such  as  these,  farmers 
and  sailors,  who,  settling  in  Britain,  laid  the  foun- 
dation of  the  England  that  we  know  to-day.  It 
was  men  such  as  these  whose  life  and  ideals  we  see 
reflected  in  that  first  great  English  epic,  "Beo- 
wulf," brought  by  our  Anglo-Saxon  forefathers 
from  their  continental  home. 

The  spirit  of  the  whole  poem  is  that  of  war, — 
not  the  clash  of  armies  nor  yet  the  struggle  of 
man  against  man,  but  far  more  significantly  the 
single-handed  combat  between  a  great  hero,  Beo- 
wulf, and  three  successive  incarnations  of  the 
monstrous  powers  of  evil.  The  first  of  these  con- 
flicts takes  place  in  Jutland.  Hrothgar,  king  of 
the  Danes,  had  built  a  magnificent  mead-hall, 
Heorot,  where  he  and  his  warriors  feasted  and 
slept.  One  night,  however,  the  sounds  of  min- 
strelsy reach  the  ears  of  a  fiendish  monster,  Gren- 
del,  who  lurks  in  the  marsh  near  by.  In  jealous 
rage  he  enters  the  hall  and  devours  thirty  of  the 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     353 

sleeping  warriors.  Night  after  night  the  fiend 
continues  his  raids,  till  finally  the  splendid  hall  is 
abandoned.  This  story  comes  to  the  attention  of 
the  young  Swedish  prince,  Beowulf,  already  re- 
nowned for  his  wisdom  and  his  many  deeds  of 
valor.  Coming  with  his  followers  to  Hrothgar, 
he  offers  his  services  to  free  the  land  of  this  hide- 
ous monster.  His  offer  is  accepted,  and  that  night 
they  occupy  the  hall.  Beowulf  alone  is  keeping 
watch  when  Grendel  enters.  In  the  deadly  strug- 
gle which  ensues  the  champion,  using  no  weapon 
but  trusting  solely  in  his  own  great  strength,  in- 
flicts on  the  monster  a  mortal  wound.  Finally 
Grendel,  with  the  loss  of  an  arm,  wrenches  him- 
self free  and  escapes  to  the  marshes  to  die.  Great 
are  the  sounds  of  rejoicing  next  day  when  the 
Danes  are  gathered  to  celebrate  Beowulf's  vic- 
tory,— a  victory,  it  must  be  remembered,  of  sheer 
human  strength  over  supernatural  forces  of  evil. 
But  the  next  night  joy  is  turned  into  panic  by 
the  appearance  of  Grendel's  mother,  a  hideous 
water-fiend,  who,  breaking  into  the  hall  to  avenge 
the  death  of  her  son,  carries  off  one  of  the  Danish 
warriors.  Again  Beowulf  offers  his  services. 
Tracking  the  fiend  through  foul  marshes  and 
moors,  he  comes  to  a  stagnant  pool  livid  with 
flame.     Plunging  into  its  filthy  waters,  he  fights 


354  English  Leadership 

the  fiend  In  her  den,  trusting  again  in  his  own 
mighty  strength,  "So  it  behooves  a  man  to  act 
when  he  thinks  to  attain  enduring  praise, — he  will 
not  be  caring  for  his  life."  But  the  fiend  is  too 
strong,  and  Beowulf  falls.  Close  to  his  hand, 
however,  he  sees  a  pile  of  weapons.  Snatching  a 
giant-forged  sword,  he  slays  the  monster,  thus 
winning  his  second  great  victory  over  the  forces 
of  evil. 

After  these  exploits,  Beowulf,  laden  with  gifts 
from  the  grateful  Danes,  returns  to  Sweden,  his 
native  land,  where  he  ultimately  becomes  king. 
After  he  has  ruled  the  land  in  all  wisdom  for  some 
fifty  years,  his  kingdom  is  threatened  with  devas- 
tation by  a  terrible  fire-breathing  dragon,  who 
hoards  up  treasure  in  a  dark  cave  near  the  sea. 
The  old  king,  once  more  "trusting  in  the  strength 
of  his  single  manhood,"  goes  out  to  do  battle 
with  this  new  incarnation  of  evil.  He  wins  in  the 
combat,  but  is  himself  mortally  wounded.  About 
to  die,  he  calls  his  warriors  about  him,  and  feast- 
ing his  eyes  on  the  treasure  speaks  his  last  words: 
"I  have  held  this  people  fifty  years;  there  was 
not  any  king  of  my  neighbors  who  dared  to  greet 
me  with  warriors,  to  oppress  me  with  terror  .  .  . 
I  held  mine  own  well;  I  sought  not  treacherous 
malice,  nor  swore  unjustly  many  oaths;  on  account 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     355 

of  all  this,  I,  sick  with  mortal  wounds,  may  have 
joy.  .  .  .  Now,  I  have  purchased  with  my  death 
a  hoard  of  treasures;  it  will  be  yet  of  advantage  at 
the  need  of  my  people,  ...  I  give  thanks  that 
I  might  before  my  dying  day  obtain  such  for  my 
people  .  .  .  longer  may  I  not  here  be."  So  the 
great  hero  dies.  His  followers  erect  in  his  honor, 
on  a  cliff  near  the  sea,  a  great  mound  which  sailors 
can  see  from  far  out  on  the  deep,  and  so  keep  in 
mind  the  memory  of  their  King.  The  poem  ends 
in  a  simple  requiem : 

"Lamented  thus 

The  loyal  Goths 

Their  chieftain's  fall, 

Hearth-fellows  true; 

They  said  he  was, 

Of  all  kings  in  the  world, 

Mildest  to  his  men 

And  most  friendly, 

To  his  lieges  benignest, 

And  most  bent  upon  glory." 

Such  in  barest  outline  is  the  framework  of  the 
poem, — crude  and  weird,  trivial  and  almost  ab- 
surd, if  we  think  only  of  the  incidents  told.  Such 
tales  of  combats  with  monster  and  dragons  are, 
of  course,  by  no  means  peculiar  to  the  English. 
In  that  they  are  like  all  other  primitive  peoples. 


35^  English  Leadership 

But  that  which  distinguishes  this  poem  from  other 
hero  tales  is  its  high  seriousness,  its  profound 
earnestness,  and  its  simple  intensity.  In  its  un- 
compromising honesty,  in  its  quiet  but  determined 
facing  of  what  were  to  those  early  English  the 
grim  realities  of  life,  it  strikes  the  keynote  of 
that  tragic  mood  which  characterizes  so  much  of 
what  is  best  in  English  literature.  Its  signifi- 
cance for  the  spirit  of  democracy,  too,  lies  not  in 
the  events  related  but  in  the  character  of  its  hero. 
Primitive  peoples,  in  the  absence  of  an  organized 
government,  turn  instinctively  to  men  of  superior 
worth  to  deliver  them  from  crime  and  oppression, 
from  natural  and  social  evils  with  which  on  every 
side  they  see  themselves  beset.  Beowulf,  the  em- 
bodiment of  all  those  qualities  which  the  English 
most  admired,  stands  before  us  In  heroic  propor- 
tions,— a  man  of  unfailing  courtesy  and  kindness, 
of  unflinching  courage  and  of  calm  self-reliance, 
not  dependent  as  were  the  Greek  heroes,  upon 
the  aid  or  Intervention  of  some  supernatural 
agency,  but  relying  solely  upon  "the  strength  of 
his  single  manhood,"  ready  to  employ  all  his  en- 
ergies, even  to  give  his  life  if  need  be,  for  the 
welfare  of  others.  Pagan  though  he  Is,  this 
Anglo-Saxon  hero  typifies,  none  the  less,  one  of 
the  most  vital  elements  In  our  modern  spirit  of 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     357 

democracy;  for  he  has  gathered  from  his  experi- 
ence of  life  a  deep  realization  of  the  moral  truth 
that  the  highest  satisfaction  for  the  individual  life 
can  be  found  only  in  the  voluntary  dedication  of 
whatever  strength  and  wisdom  he  possesses  to  the 
deliverance  of  his  fellowman  from  evil  and  op- 
pression. "He  who  has  the  chance  should  work 
mighty  deeds  before  he  die;  that  is  for  a  mighty 
man  the  best  memorial."  Nothing  could  be  more 
significant  for  democracy  than  this  vivid  sense  of 
the  obligation  of  leadership,  the  necessity  laid 
upon  the  man  of  superior  merit  to  employ  his 
talent  in  the  cause  of  human  freedom,  in  the  fur- 
therance of  social  progress.  That  is  the  spirit 
which  dominated  Pitt  and  Franklin,  Gladstone 
and  -Lincoln.  That  is  the  spirit,  too,  which  has 
guided  English  men  of  science  like  Francis  Bacon 
and  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse  and 
Thomas  Edison.  Such,  too,  is  the  spirit  which 
inspired  Wycliffe  and  Milton,  Wordsworth, 
Lowell  and  Rudyard  Kipling,  That  high  concep- 
tion of  the  obligation  of  leadership  is  the  very 
breath  of  that  which  is  most  distinctively  Enghsh  ' 
in  literature. 

But  along  with  that  conception,  English  litera- 
ture has  given  to  the  world  another  vital  aspect  of 
the  ideal  of  leadership,  without  which  even  the 


358  English  Leadership 

highest  sense  of  obligation  would  be  rendered  In- 
effectual. That  other  aspect  is  the  recognition  of 
leadership.  Though  the  feats  of  Beowulf,  in 
characteristically  English  fashion,  were  accom- 
plished by  relying  solely  upon  his  own  magnificent 
strength,  that  strength  was  in  turn  made  doubly 
powerful  through  the  loyal  support  of  his  devoted 
followers.  If  there  Is  among  these  early  English 
any  trait  more  remarkable  than  their  indomitable 
individualism  it  Is  their  matchless  loyalty  to  leader- 
ship. It  Is  that  spirit  which  prompts  the  cry  of 
one  of  Beowulf's  men,  when  they  see  their  chief  in 
mortal  peril:  "Well  do  I  mind  when  we  drank 
mead  In  the  hall,  how  we  promised  our  lord  who 
gave  us  these  rings  that  we  would  repay  him  his 
war-gifts,  if  ever  the  need  should  arise.  Us  he 
picked  from  the  host  for  this  venture,  and  heart- 
ened with  hope  of  glory;  he  gave  us  these  gifts 
because  he  thought  us  good  fighters,  gallant 
wearers  of  helmets;  though  all  the  while  our  lord 
meant  to  do  this  deed  alone  and  unaided,  shepherd 
of  his  people,  who  of  all  men  is  foremost  in  glori- 
ous deeds  of  daring.  Now  is  the  day  come  that 
our  chief  needs  the  strength  of  good  spearmen. 
Up !  let  us  go  to  him  now,  help  our  hero  while 
the  heat  sore  tries  him.  As  for  me  I  would 
rather  that  the   ruthless   flame   should   wrap   my 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     359 

body  together  with  his :  'tis  not  meet,  methinks, 
for  us  to  bring  home  our  shields  before  we  have 
felled  the  foe,  saved  the  life  of  the  lord  of  the 
Weder-people." 

This  was  the  spirit  that  made  Beowulf's  chief- 
tainship possible — voluntary  submission  to  ac- 
knowledged superiority,  unflinching  loyalty  to 
leadership.  What  could  be  more  inspiring  than 
that  same  devotion  to  a  leader  which  thrills 
through  every  strain  of  the  old  English  war  chant, 
the  "Song  of  the  Fight  at  Maldon"?  In  that 
furious  battle  against  Danish  invaders,  not  only 
does  English  honor  scorn  to  take  vantage  ground 
of  the  foe,  but  man  after  man  rushes  forward, 
keeping  the  sacred  pledge  of  loyalty  to  avenge  the 
death  of  his  leader,  crying  that  not  one  inch  of 
English  earth  must  be  yielded  to  the  foot  of  a 
foreign  invader.  That  was  the  spirit  of  English 
devotion,  of  English  recognition  of  leadership 
which  at  the  battle  of  Hastings,  piled  high  the 
mound  of  bodies  about  the  fallen  Harold.  That 
is  the  clarion  call  that  echoes  through  English 
verse  from  the  "Fight  at  Maldon"  to  "The 
Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  from  old  English 
and  Scottish  ballads,  through  Campbell  and  Scott 
to  Lowell  and  Kipling.  It  is  this  exaltation  of  the 
ideal   of  leadership  which   in   Elizabethan   times 


360  English  Leadership 

finds  expression  in  English  historical  drama  with 
its  apotheosis  of  patriotism. 

But  perhaps  Its  most  significant  development  is 
seen  in  the  literature  of  Puritan  democracy.  Beo- 
wulf, in  the  struggle  for  the  liberation  of  his  peo- 
ple from  the  dragon  of  oppression,  had  given  up 
his  life.  In  a  similar  struggle  a  thousand  years 
later,  John  Milton,  devoted  champion  of  Puritan 
idealism,  suffered  the  lost  of  his  sight.  The  spirit 
of  "Beowulf"  and  the  "Battle  of  Maldon,"  of 
English  balladry  and  Elizabethan  drama,  speaks 
once  more  in  the  lines  of  Milton  In  reference  to 
his  blindness : 

"Yet  I  argue  not 
Against  Heaven's  hand  or  will,  nor  bate  a  jot 
Of  heart  or  hope,  but  still  bear  up  and  steer 
Right  onward.     What  supports  me,  dost  thou  ask? 
The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them  overplied 
In  liberty's  defense,  my  noble  task, 
Of  which  all  Europe  rings  from  side  to  side." 

In  that  premature  struggle  of  English  democracy 
against  the  forces  of  absolute  monarchy  and  Irre- 
sponsible authority,  Milton  saw  no  hope  for  Eng- 
land save  In  the  triumph  of  its  stern  and  unyield- 
ing leader,  Oliver  Cromwell.  In  him  Milton 
recognized 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    361 

"Our  chief  of  men,  who  through  a  cloud 
Not  of  war  only,  but  detractions  rude. 
Guided  by  faith  and  matchless  fortitude, 
To  peace  and  truth  thy  glorious  way  hast  ploughed." 

But  Milton  saw,  too,  and  none  more  clearly  than 
he,  that  much  remained 

"To  conquer  still ;  Peace  hath  her  victories 
No  less  renowned  than  War:  new  foes  arise, 
Threatening  to  bind  our  souls  with  secular  chains, 
Help  us  to  save  free  conscience  from  the  paw 
Of  hireling  wolves,  whose  Gospel  is  their  maw." 

But  the  day  of  a  free  republicanism  was  not 
yet  come.  With  a  despair  that  grew  ever  deeper 
and  sterner,  the  blind  poet  and  statesman  watched 
the  ideal  he  had  cherished,  the  cause  he  had  so 
unflinchingly  supported,  go  down  to  defeat  in  the 
hands  of  a  leader  whose  narrowing  and  hardening 
policy  tended  farther  and  farther  from  the  liberal 
ideal  of  the  earlier  Puritanism.  In  the  failure  of 
Puritan  democracy,  the  forces  of  reaction  tri- 
umphed. Disillusioned  and  blind,  almost  solitary 
in  his  grim  resolution  to  hold  fast  the  old  faith, 
Milton  took  refuge  in  poetry. 

The  old  Anglo-Saxon  consciousness  of  the  sa- 
cred obligation  of  leadership  had  inspired  the 
first  great   epic  in   English   literature.      It  is  no 


362  English  Leadership 

mere  coincidence  but  rather  the  inevitable  out- 
working of  the  English  spirit  which  made  the  vio- 
lation of  that  sacred  obligation  the  theme  of  the 
other  great  epic  which  the  English  spirit  has  con- 
tributed to  the  literature  of  the  world.  Great 
works  of  art  are  in  one  sense  created  in  those 
upper  regions  of  human  thought  and  feeling  which 
are  independent  of  time  and  place.  But  magnifi- 
cent as  "Paradise  Lost"  unquestionably  is  as  an 
expression  of  universal  emotions,  it  is  inconceiv- 
able that  it  could  have  been  produced  at  any  other 
period  of  English  history,  even  at  any  earlier 
period  of  Milton's  own  life.  For  into  its  fabric 
are  wrought  not  only  those  tremendous  ethical 
forces  which  had  produced  the  England  of 
Milton's  day,  but  also  all  those  experiences  of 
Milton's  own  life  which  had  made  possible  for 
him  such  sublime  reaches  of  thought  and  emotion. 
One  of  the  deepest  of  his  convictions  was  that  of 
the  sacred  responsibility  of  leadership.  It  was 
against  the  abuse  of  ecclesiastical  power  that 
Milton  had  flung  out  his  protest  in  "Lycidas," — 
against  pretending  shepherds 

"that  scarce   themselves  know  how  to  hold 
A  sheep-hook,  or  have  learned  aught  else  the  least 
That  to  the  faithful  herdsman's  art  belongs!  .  .  . 
The  hungry  sheep  look  up  and  are  not  fed." 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     363 

He  had  watched  the  irresponsible  exercise  of  au- 
thority by  Charles  I  plunging  the  nation  into  Civil 
War.  And  he  had  watched  that  same  nation, — 
saved  as  he  had  thought  by  Puritan  democracy, — 
subjected  again  to  servile  dependence  upon  the 
will  of  a  dissolute  sovereign, — a  nation  betrayed, 
as  Milton  despairingly  realized,  by  the  tragic  mis- 
direction of  energy,  the  fatal  misconception  of 
power  on  the  part  of  those  very  same  Puritan 
leaders  in  whom  Milton  had  anchored  his  hopes 
for  the  nation.  Small  wonder,  then,  that  these 
experiences  should  color  all  his  later  work,  that 
all  through  "Paradise  Lost,"  "Paradise  Re- 
gained," and  "Samson  Agonistes"  should  run  an 
uncompromising  rebuke  of  the  misuse  of  power 
and  a  stern  condemnation  of  all  human  weakness. 

".  .  .  If  weakness  may  excuse, 
What  murderer,  what  traitor,  parricide, 
Incestuous,  sacrilegious,  but  may  plead  it? 
All  wickedness  is  weakness;  that  plea,  therefore, 
With  God  or  man  will  gain  thee  no  remission." 

In  "Paradise  Lost"   it  was  not  so  much  the 
story 

"Of  Man's  first  disobedience  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree,  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  world,  and  all  our  woe," — 


364  English  Leadership 

nor  was  It  so  much  the  desire  to  "justify  the  ways 
of  God  to  men,"  that  inspired  Milton  to  such  in- 
comparable majesty  of  verse;  his  real  purpose  was 
rather  to  set  forth,  in  all  its  unspeakable  baseness 
and  in  all  its  tragic  consequence,  Satan  the  Arch 
Fiend's  abuse  of  that  most  sacred  of  trusts,  the 
capacity  for  leadership. 

"He  it  was,  whose  guile, 
Stirred  up  with  envy  and  revenge,  deceived 
The  mother  of  mankind ;  what  time  his  pride 
Had  cast  him  out  from  heaven,  with  all  his  host 
Of  rebel  angels ;  by  whose  aid,  aspiring 
To  set  himself  in  glory  above  his  peers, 
He  trusted  to  have  equaled  the  Most  High, 
If  he  opposed ;  and,  with  ambitious  aim 
Against  the  throne  and  monarchy  of  God, 
Raised  impious  war  in  heaven,  and  battle  proud, 
With  vain  attempt.     Him  the  Almighty  Power 
Hurled  headlong  flaming  from  the  ethereal  sky, 
With  hideous  ruin  and  combustion,  down 
To  bottomless  perdition ;  there  to  dwell 
In  adamantine  chains  and  penal  fire. 
Who  durst  defy  the  Omnipotent  to  arms." 

But  Satan  was  too  determined  a  foe  to  be  thus 
easily  disposed  of.  Rising  from  the  fiery  lake,  he 
gathered  his  followers  together  for  counsel. 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     365 

"After  short  silence  then, 
And  summons  read,  the  great  consult  began. 
High  on  a  throne  of  royal  state,  which  far 
Outshone  the  wealth  of  Ormus  and  of  Ind,  .  .  . 
Satan  exalted  sat,  by  merit  raised 
To  that  bad  eminence." 

After  discussing  various  plans  for  revenging 
themselves  against  the  Almighty,  they  at  last  de- 
cide to  frustrate  the  whole  plan  of  creation  by 
causing  the  fall  of  Adam  and  Eve.  But  each  of 
his  followers  fears  to  undertake  so  hazardous  a 
task  and  Satan  decides  himself  to  carry  out  the 
project. 

"But  I  should  ill  become  this  throne,  O  peers, 

And  this  imperial  sovereignty,  adorned 

With  splendor  armed  with  power,  if  aught  proposed 

And  judged  of  public  moment,  in  the  shape 

Of  difficulty  or  danger,  could  deter 

Me  from  attempting.     Wherefore  do  I  assume 

These  royalties,  and  not  refuse  to  reign, 

Refusing  to  accept  as  great  a  share 

Of  hazard  as  of  honor,  due  alike 

To  him  who  reigns,  and  so  much  to  him  due 

Of  hazard  more,  as  he  above  the  rest 

High  honored  sits?" 

His  followers  humbly  accept  his  proffered  service; 


366  English  Leadership 

"toward  him  they  bow 
With  awful  reverence  prone ;  and  as  a  God 
Extol  him  equal  to  the  Highest  in  heaven, 
Nor  failed  thej^  to  express  how  much  they  praised 
That  for  the  general  safety  he  despised 
His  own;  for  neither  do  the  spirits  damned 
Lose  all  their  virtue." 

The  remainder  of  the  poem  describes  the  forging, 
link  by  link,  of  the  chain  of  tragic  consequence 
that  ultimately  bound  Satan  and  his  host  and  all 
mankind  in  slavery  to  sin. 

Whatever  may  be  our  point  of  view  with  regard 
to  Milton's  theology,  Satan  stands  before  us  here, 
as  heroic  in  proportion  as  Beowulf;  but  it  is  borne 
in  upon  us  that  while  the  one  did  all  in  his  power 
to  debase  mankind,  the  other  gave  of  his  strength 
toward  its  upbuilding  and  ennoblement.  At  times 
Milton  seems  to  be  overpowered  by  his  own  crea- 
tion. Here  and  there  we  catch  glimpses  of  Satan 
almost,  as  it  were,  the  personification  of  that  spirit 
of  republicanism  which  had  for  so  long  been 
Milton's  ideal.  But  the  more  attractive  the  at- 
tributes that  Satan  displays,  the  more  tragic  the 
figure  becomes.  The  Arch-Fiend  has  all  the  great 
qualities  of  leadership,  except  that  one  most  es- 
sential of  all,  the  high  ethical  purpose  that  keeps 
man  true  to. the. Eternal  Verities.     It  was  Satan's 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     367 

rebellion  against  universal  law,  his  setting  up  of 
his  own  will,  his  own  aims,  in  opposition  to  those 
of  the  whole  moral  order,  which  plunged  not  only 
himself  but  all  of  his  followers  with  him  "down 
to  bottomless  perdition."  "Paradise  Lost"  is 
the  tragedy  of  power  misdirected,  of  leadership 
misconceived.  English  literature  has  given  to  the 
world  many  such  tragic  figures,  but  none  so  colos- 
sal as  this  of  Satan,  "the  arch-enemy  of  all  man- 
kind." 

Both  Beowulf  and  Satan,  however,  were  of 
stature  too  heroic  to  be  humanly  possible.  They 
typify  perfectly  the  English  conception  of  leader- 
ship, one  in  its  positive,  the  other  in  its  negative 
aspect,  but  on  an  enormously  exaggerated  scale. 
For  a  more  truly  human  ideal  of  the  English  hero, 
we  must  pass  over  the  hundred  years  that  inter- 
vened between  the  Restoration  and  the  dawn  of 
the  Age  of  Revolutions.  The  eighteenth  century 
was  a  period  of  cynicism  and  artificiality,  of 
"freezing  reason"  and  "common  sense,"  a  period 
when  the  English  spirit  was  cramped  into  foreign 
molds  and  forced  to  find  expression  under  nar- 
rowly aristocratic  and  classical  disguises.  But 
that  spirit  was  too  strongly  ethical  and  emotional 
to  remain  long  buried  under  the  ashes  of  a  burnt- 
out   formalism.     The   democratic  ideal   was   too 


368  English  Leadership 

vitally  inherent  in  the  English  mind  to  be  alto- 
gether quenched.  To  stir  the  smoldering  embers 
into  flame,  however,  England  needed  some  new 
and  poignant  national  experience,  some  new  na- 
tional crisis  to  fire  once  more  into  fresh  and  vigor- 
ous expression  the  old  Anglo-Saxon  ideals  of 
leadership.  That  crisis  came  when  the  American 
Revolution  broke  out  across  the  seas,  when 
Napoleonism  loomed  across  the  Channel,  threat- 
ening the  very  life  of  the  English  nation.  Only 
then  were  England's  dormant  energies  roused  to 
protect  the  empire  she  had  founded;  only  then  did 
her  patriotism  rise  to  save  the  civilization  she  had 
builded;  only  then  did  she  call  forth  a  Burke,  a 
Nelson  and  a  Wellington  to  battle  once  more,  like 
Beowulf  of  old,  in  the  cause  of  human  freedom 
But  how  different  the  spirit  now,  and  yet  how 
like.  In  "Beowulf"  the  conflict  had  been  one  of 
sheer  physical  strength,  and  the  loyalty  he  inspired 
had  been  personal  devotion  to  a  chosen  personal 
leader.  In  Milton's  poem,  the  struggle  was  a 
moral  one,  based  largely  on  religious  principles, 
while  the  recognition  that  Satan  won  was  merely 
the  awed  worship  felt  for  a  leader  of  manifestly 
superior  qualities.  But  in  the  days  of  Burke,  of 
Nelson  and  of  Wellington,  the  English  conception 
of  leadership  was  lifted  to  a  higher  plane.     The 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     369 

issue  now  was  not  merely  that  of  Burke  against 
George  III,  or  of  Nelson  against  Napoleon,  but  of 
the  English  spirit  of  free  government  against  the 
tyranny  that  would  overthrow  it.  Every  Ameri- 
can minute-man  fought  not  for  Washington,  but 
with  him.  Every  English  sailor  on  board  the 
"Victory"  fought,  not  for  Nelson  but  with  Nelson, 
for  England  and  all  that  England  stood  for.  The 
ideal  of  leadership,  with  its  obligations  on  the  one 
side  and  its  recognition  on  the  other,  had  become 
a  bond  of  mutual  cooperation  toward  a  common 
end.  To  this  voluntary  recognition  of  an  innately 
superior  leader  had  been  added  another  element 
in  the  modern  spirit  of  democracy, — that  of  a 
mutual  cooperation  on  the  part  of  the  whole  com- 
munity toward  a  common  social  welfare,  in  other 
words  a  new  sense  of  social  equality.  This  new 
conception  once  attained,  the  foundations  of  a 
truly  democratic  government  at  last  were  laid. 

This  new  experience  in  the  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples,  this  new  ideal  of  leadership, 
found  expression  in  their  literature  in  the  two 
characteristically  differing  reactions  it  produced, 
on  the  one  hand  the  individually  conservative,  on 
the  other  the  socially  democratic.  In  Words- 
worth, the  spiritual  conception  of  the  dedication 
of  the  individual  life  to  a  great  ideal  finds  ex- 


370  English  Leadership 

presslon  in  his  "Character  of  the  Happy  War- 
rior": 

"Who  doomed  to  go  in  company  with  Pain, 

And  Fear,  and  Bloodshed,  miserable  train! 

Turns  his  necessity  to  glorious  gain  ; 

In  face  of  those  doth  exercise  a  power 

V/hich  is  our  human  nature's  highest  dower; 

Controls  them  and  subdues,  transmutes,  bereaves, 

Of  their  bad  influence,  and  their  good  receives; 

.  .  'Tis  he  whose  law  is  reason ;  .  .  . 
Who,  if  he  rise  to  station  of  command, 
Rises  by  open  means;  .  .  . 
Who  comprehends  his  trust,  and  to  the  same 
Keeps  faithful  with  a  singleness  of  aim ;  .  .  . 
Whose  powers  shed  round  him  in  the  common  strife, 
Or  mild  concerns  of  ordinary  life, 
A  constant  influence,  a  peculiar  grace; 
But  who,  if  he  be  called  upon  to  face 
Some  awful  moment  to  which  Heaven  has  joined 
Great  issues,  good  or  bad  for  human  kind,  .  .  . 
Through  the  heat  of  conflict  keeps  the  law 
In  calmness  made,  and  sees  what  he  foresaw;  .  .  . 
Who,  whether  praise  of  him  must  walk  the  earth 
For  ever,  and  to  noble  deeds  give  birth. 
Or  he  must  fall  to  sleep  without  his  fame. 
And  leave  a  dead  unprofitable  name, 
Finds  comfort  in  himself  and  in  his  cause." 

In  this  portrait  of  the  ideal  leader,  we  see  the 
features  of  all  that  line  of  noble  Anglo-Saxon  an- 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     371 

cestors,  who  yielded  up  their  lives  In  answer  to 
the  call  of  Duty,  "stern  Daughter  of  the  Voice 
of  God."  But  this  is  the  ideal  of  the  Words- 
worth of  later  years,  the  "lost  leader"  who  de- 
serted the  ranks  of  the  fiery  revolutionists, 
Shelley,  Keats  and  Byron,  to  view  the  human 
struggle  from  apart,  to  take  refuge  in  that  tradi- 
tional English  conservatism  which  saw  in  Duty  as 
dictated  by  Reason  the  power  that  "calm'st  the 
weary  strife  of  frail  humanity."  Steadfast  in  the 
assurance  of  the  eternal  rightness  of  this  inner 
voice,  Wordsworth  would  have  his  ideal  hero 
draw  his  last  breath  "in  confidence  of  Heaven's 
applause."  Whether  he  was  accepted  of  men  or 
not,  was  of  no  essential  consequence. 

Carlyle's  "Heroes  and  Hero  Worship"  carries 
this  idea  to  its  culmination  in  the  very  apotheosis 
of  solitary  individualism.  In  his  opinion,  it  Is 
solely  the  consecrated  work  of  heroes  "sent  by 
God,"  which  makes  a  nation's  history.  The  few, 
the  best  and  strongest,  should  command;  to  these 
the  many,  ignorant  and  weak,  must  yield  obedi- 
ence, forced  if  necessary.  "Liberty?  The  true 
liberty  of  a  man,"  Carlyle  says,  "consists  In  his 
finding  out,  or  being  forced  to  find  out,  the  right 
path,  and  to  walk  thereon.  Whatsoever  forwards 
him  In  that,  let  It  come  to  him  even  In  the  shape  of 


372  English  Leadership 

blows  and  spurnlngs,  is  liberty."  "Democracy, 
the  chase  of  Liberty  in  that  direction  shall  go  its 
full  course.  The  Toiling  Millions  of  Mankind, 
in  most  vital  need  and  passionate  instinctive  de- 
sire of  Guidance,  shall  cast  away  False-Guidance; 
and  hope,  for  an  hour,  that  No-Guidance  will 
suffice  them.  But  oppression  by  your  Mock- 
Superiors  well  shaken  off,  the  grand  problem  yet 
remains  to  solve:  That  of  finding  government  by 
your  Real-Superiors  !"  "Democracy,  which  means 
despair  of  finding  any  Heroes  to  govern  you,  and 
contented  putting-up  with  the  want  of  them, — 
he  who  discovers  no  God  whatever,  how  shall 
he  discover  Heroes,  the  visible  Temples  of 
God?" 

How  strange  such  doctrine  sounds  to  modern 
ears  I  Can  it  be  in  any  sense  a  voicing  of  the 
English  spirit?  In  its  sublime  protest  against  a 
growing  materialism  and  in  its  clarion  call  to  high 
spiritual  endeavor  on  the  part  of  the  wise,  the 
strong  and  the  fit  to  bear  the  burdens  of  the  weak, 
yes.  In  its  setting  up  of  an  aristocracy  of  indi- 
vidual worth,  yes.  In  its  emphasis  upon  the  su- 
preme importance  of  ethical  principles  in  the  shap- 
ing of  human  conduct,  he  is  even  more  distinctly 
English.  In  his  stern  unbending  Puritanism,  he 
Is  nothing  less  than  a  direct  lineal  descendant  of 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    373 

the  Oliver  Cromwell  whose  biography  he  so  sym- 
pathetically set  forth.  But  in  his  blind  worship 
of  the  hero,  Carlyle  is  anything  but  English.  The 
Englishman  doesn't  worship  his  heroes.  He  will- 
ingly entrusts  them  with  authority  and  then  sternly 
holds  them  to  account, — the  English  hero  is  not 
above  the  law.  He  must  be,  too,  a  hero  per  se, 
neither  by  divine  right  nor  by  heredity,  nor  yet  by 
his  ability  to  lead — Satan  could  lead.  In  English 
eyes  the  hero  is  a  hero  only  by  his  own  innate 
ability  to  prove  himself  a  benefactor  to  the  race. 
Carlyle's  hero  is  a  "divine  right"  being,  whose 
strength  to  achieve  is  his  own  justification  for  be- 
ing. That  conception  fastened  itself  upon  Carlyle 
in  consequence  of  his  over-fond  devotion  to  Ger- 
man philosophy.  Such  a  conception  of  a  hero 
above  the  law  leads  inevitably  to  that  paternalism, 
that  autocracy  which  to-day  is  wasting  the  land 
of  its  birth.  The  English  hero  is  not  a  Bismarck 
but  a  Gladstone,  not  a  Kaiser  but  a  Lincoln,  Car- 
lyle, with  his  hero  worship  gone  mad,  stands  in 
solitary  negation  of  that  vital  principle  of  de- 
mocracy that  is  so  essentially  English,  so  pre- 
eminently American,  that  intense  democratic  ideal- 
ism that  glows  through  Emerson's  "Representa- 
tive Men."  To  English-speaking  peoples,  heroes 
are  not  beings  to  be  worshiped,  but,  as  Emerson 


374  English  Leadership 

so  aptly  quotes  from  Sterling, 

"Our  nobler  brothers,   though  one  in  blood." 

This  is  the  very  quintessence  of  the  English  Ideal 
of  leadership, — a  universal  brotherhood  of  men 
In  which  the  wiser,  the  more  experienced  lends  a 
hand  to  cheer  and  guide  his  fellows  along  the  path 
where  each  and  all,  together,  must 

"Strive  upward,  working  out  the  beast." 

It  Is  this,  the  democratic,  Ideal  of  leadership 
which  is  revealed  in  Emerson  and  in  Tom  Paine, 
In  Whittler  and  In  Curtis,  In  Walt  Whitman's 
"Pioneers,"  and,  most  emphatically  of  all,  In 
Lowell's  portrait  of  Lincoln  : 

"Nature,  they  say,  doth  dote, 
And  cannot  make  a  man 
Save  on  some  worn-out  plan, 
Repeating  us  by  rote: 

For  him  her  Old  World  moulds  aside  she  threw, 
And  choosing  sweet  clay  from  the  breast 

Of  the  unexhausted  West, 
With  stuff  untainted  shaped  a  hero  new, 
Wise,  steadfast  in  the  strength  of  God,  and  true. 

How  beautiful  to  see 
Once  more  a  shepherd  of  mankind  indeed, 
Who  loved  his  charge,  but  never  loved  to  lead ; 
One  whose  meek  flock  the  people  joyed  to  be, 

Not  lured  by  any  cheat  of  birth. 

But  by  his  clear-grained  human  worth, 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    375 

And  brave  old  wisdom  of  sincerity! 
They  knew  that  outward  grace  is  dust; 
They  could  not  choose  but  trust 
In  that  sure-footed  mind's  unfaltering  skill, 
And  supple-tempered  will 
That  bent   like   perfect  steel   to  spring  again   and 
thrust. 

Great  captains,  with  their  guns  and  drums, 
Disturb  our  judgment  for  the  hour. 
But  at  last  silence  comes; 
These  all  are  gone  and  standing  like  a  tower, 
Our  children  shall  behold  his  fame, 
The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  foreseeing  man, 
Sagacious,  patient,  dreading  praise,  not  blame. 
New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American." 

It  is  this  Anglo-American  democratic  ideal 
which  has  sounded  the  note  of  social  progress 
through  all  our  modern  literature  during  the  last 
one  hundred  years.  But  that  high-souled  concep- 
tion would  never  have  been  possible  had  it  not 
been  for  the  firm  establishment,  by  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  of  that  other  great  ele- 
ment which  the  English  spirit  has  contributed  to 
our  modern  democracy.  That  element  is  the  idea 
of  social  equality.  It  was,  indeed,  a  plant  of  slow 
growth,  but  a  very  sturdy  one,  withal. 

In  primitive  Anglo-Saxon  days,  there  had  been 


376  English  Leadership 

but  little  social  inequality.  There  was  a  rude 
nobility,  but  one  based  for  the  most  part  upon  the 
idea  of  individual  worth,  a  genuine  aristocracy, 
the  rule  of  the  best  and  most  worthy.  Such  is  the 
social  world  portrayed  in  "Beowulf."  These 
early  English  had  their  ceremony  of  royaltj'^, 
"their  dignities  an'  a'  that,"  but  there  is  nowhere 
any  hint  of  social  condescension,  nowhere  any  sug- 
gestion of  hard  and  fixed  class  distinctions.  The 
old  Anglo-Saxon  society  was  a  free  field  for  the 
demonstration  of  individual  worth. 

With  the  coming  of  the  Normans,  however,  all 
was  changed.  Upon  the  ground  work  of  early 
English  institutions  a  new  regime  was  built.  A 
new  nobility  was  created,  based  upon  distinction 
of  birth.  The  Anglo-Saxon  thegn  was  made 
vassal  to  a  Norman  overlord;  the  English  free- 
man became  a  serf.  Class  distinction  between 
Lords  and  Commons  never  grew  hard  and  fast  as 
on  the  Continent,  but  this  did  not  apply  to  the 
lowest  class,  the  great  substratum  of  tollers  upon 
whom  rested  the  burden  of  production.  For 
these  the  Magna  Carta  made  no  provision;  for 
these  there  was  no  redress  of  grievance  through 
representation  in  parliament.  For  more  than 
three  centuries  they  labored  on, — patient,  mute, 
but  not  unfeeling,  accepting  the  appointed  order 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    377 

as  fixed  and  Inevitable.  Then  in  the  fourteenth 
century  came  the  wars  with  France  and  the  result- 
ing Black  Death.  Half  the  population  died  of 
the  plague,  fields  were  left  unfilled,  crops  ungar- 
nered  and  granaries  empty.  Many  that  had  es- 
caped the  pestilence  died  of  famine.  The  cry  of 
the  poor  went  up  in  vain  over  the  land.  But  at 
last  their  sufferings  found  effective  utterance  in 
the  words  of  John  Ball,  the  "mad  priest  of  Kent." 
It  was  in  his  preaching  that  English  men  first 
listened  to  a  declaration  of  social  equality  and 
the  natural  rights  of  man.  "Things  will  never 
be  well  in  England,"  the  historian  Green  repre- 
sents him  as  saying,  "so  long  as  goods  be  not  in 
common,  and  so  long  as  there  be  villeins  and  gen- 
tlemen. By  what  right  are  they  whom  we  call 
lords  greater  folk,  than  we?  On  what  grounds 
have  they  deserved  It?  Why  do  they  hold  us  In 
serfage?  If  we  all  came  of  the  same  father  and 
mother,  of  Adam  and  Eve,  how  can  they  say  or 
prove  that  they  are  better  than  we,  if  it  be  not 
that  they  make  us  gain  for  them  by  our  toil  what 
they  spend  in  their  pride?  They  are  clothed  in 
velvet  and  warm  In  their  furs  and  their  ermines, 
while  we  are  covered  with  rags.  They  have  wine 
and  spices  and  fair  bread;  and  we  oat-cake  and 
straw,  and  water  to  drink.     They  have  leisure  and 


378  English  Leadership 

fine  houses;  we  have  pain  and  labor,  the  rain  and 
the  wind  in  the  fields.  And  yet  it  is  of  us  and  of 
our  toil  that  these  men  hold  their  states."  Ball's 
leveling  doctrine  epitomized  in  the  popular 
rhyme, 

"When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?" 

became  the  watchword  of  that  great  mass  of  rest- 
less, starving  toilers  in  whose  behalf  Wyclif^e 
labored  with  such  devotion. 

In  literature  their  grievances  found  expression 
through  a  poem  of  William  Langland's,  the 
"Complaint  of  Piers  the  Ploughman,"  which 
reveals  to  us  with  terrible  fidelity  the  life 
of  that  great  substratum, — its  misery,  its  moral 
and  religious  questioning,  its  social  revolt  against 
the  selfishness  and  corruption  of  the  rich  with 
which  it  contrasts  so  strongly.  Nothing  could  be 
greater  than  the  gulf  between  this  world  of  the 
struggling  masses  and  that  other  world  of  wealth 
and  beauty,  ease  and  luxury  which  we  see  reflected 
in  the  work  of  Chaucer.  Langland's  world  is 
the  world  of  toil  and  hunger,  of  narrowness, 
misery  and  dull  monotony,  whose  grim  earnestness 
is    made    only    the    more    intense    by    the    coarse 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     379 

laughter  and  rude  revelry  of  the  unlettered  peas- 
ant. 

"I  was  very  forwandered,"  says  the  poet, 
"and  went  me  to  rest  under  a  broad  bank  by  a 
burn  side,  and  as  I  lay  and  leaned  and  looked  in 
the  water  I  slumbered  in  a  sleeping,  it  sweyved 
(sounded)  so  merry."  Sleeping  thus,  the  poet 
sees  in  a  dream  the  world  of  his  every-day  life 
going  on  pilgrimage,  not  to  Canterbury  but  to 
Truth.  In  the  crowd  are  traders  and  chafferers, 
hermits  and  beggars,  minstrels  and  jinglers, 
ploughmen,  weavers  and  laborers,  lawyers  who 
plead  only  for  large  sums  of  gold,  bishops  given 
to  overmuch  haunting  of  courts,  pardoners  from 
Rome  driving  good  bargains  with  conscience-smit- 
ten peasants  and  "parting  the  silver"  with  the  vil- 
lage priest.  As  a  guide  on  their  pilgrimage  in 
search  of  Truth,  they  desire  neither  clerk  nor 
priest,  but  Piers  the  Ploughman  whom  they  find  at 
ivork  in  his  field.  He  bids  them  to  wait  till  he's 
finished  his  half-acre.  Piers'  philosophy  is  of  the 
simplest  and  most  practical  sort.  He  bids  the 
knight  to  cease  cheating  the  poor  man:  "Though 
he  be  thine  underling  here,  well  mayhap  in  heaven 
that  he  be  worthier  set  and  with  more  bliss  than 
thou."  Two  doctrines  he  preaches  with  homeliest 
■wisdom, — the  gospel  of  quality  and  the  gospel  of 


380  English  Leadership 

labor.  Piers'  chief  aim  in  life  is  to  work;  his 
chief  duty,  he  believes,  is  to  make  the  rest  of  the 
world  work  with  him.  Hunger,  he  says,  is  God's 
whip  in  driving  the  idler  to  toil.  On  the  eve  of 
the  struggle  between  capital  and  labor,  Langland 
thus  striv^es  to  be  fair  to  both;  but  pervading  the 
whole  poem  is  a  sense  of  pathos,  loneliness  and, 
terrible  despair,  for  it  is  only  in  a  dream  that 
the  world  will  repent  at  the  preaching  of  Reason. 
The  poem  closes  with  the  prophecy  of  a  religious 
revolution,  when  man's  inherent  right  to  think  and 
judge  for  himself  would  be  established.  Thus 
two  centuries  before  the  Reformation  there  was 
foreshadowed,  in  the  "Vision  of  Piers  Plough- 
man," that  spirit  of  free  inquiry,  that  right  of  "the 
masses"  to  decide  for  themselves,  which  was  later 
to  result  not  only  in  a  religious  reformation,  but 
far  more  significantly  in  a  great  social  revolution 
in  which  all  artificial  distinctions  of  rank  and  class 
would  be  gradually  swept  away  and  the  principle 
of  social  equality  be  established  on  a  firm  and 
enduring  basis.  But  that  time  was  yet  five  cen- 
turies and  more  away.  In  the  meantime  the  cry 
of  the  people  was  heard  in  their  literature,  voiced 
sometimes  by  plowman  or  tinker,  sometimes  by 
priest  or  noble,  but  more  often  by  members  of  the 
great  middle  class,  a  noble  band  of  poets,  drama- 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    381 

tists  and  novelists,  essayists  and  orators,  self- 
consecrated  champions  of  the  down-trodden  and 
the  oppressed,  the  "nobler  brothers"  of  the  poor, 
who  reach  out  the  helping  hand  of  understanding 
sympathy  to  cheer  and  guide  their  lowlier  fellows 
on  to  ultimate  attainment  of  their  own  long- 
fought-for  freedom.  That  element  in  English 
literature,  as  contrasted  with  the  courtly  verse  and 
prose  of  the  Renaissance  and  of  the  classical  age, 
that  element  which  voiced  the  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings of  the  lower  classes,  the  humanitarian  ele- 
ment, is  a  distinctly  English  contribution  to  world 
literature. 

Of  the  presence  in  the  ranks  of  the  people  them- 
selves of  the  power  to  achieve  that  freedom,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  All  through  the  pages  of  litera- 
ture are  pictured  in  ever-increasing  numbers  scenes 
which  portray  the  spirit  of  the  masses, — their 
native  roughness  and  energy,  their  traditional 
Anglo-Saxon  courage,  assertiveness  and  dignity, 
their  unfailing  Celtic  optimism,  resourcefulness 
and  versatility,  their  characteristically  English 
delight  in  fair  play  which  scorned  all  treachery, 
cowardice  and  baseness.  The  combination  of  all 
these  qualities  gave  them  that  essential  sanity  of 
outlook  which  expressed  itself  on  the  one  hand  in 
a  quick  response  to  sincere  and  intelligent  leader- 


382  English  Leadership 

ship,  on  the  other  to  a  prompt  repudiation  of  all 
artificial  restraints,  conventions  and  distinctions. 
They  felt,  too,  a  profound  reverence  for  law, — 
not  the  man-made  laws  of  the  statute  books,  but 
those  fundamental  principles  of  moral  law  and 
order  which  had  been  wrought  out  through  cen- 
turies of  human  experience  in  living. 

These  traits  that  make  for  democracy  are  re- 
flected nowhere  more  vividly  and  forcefully  than 
in  the  ballads  of  Robin  Hood,  that  popular  hero 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  beloved  from  end  to  end  of 
Merrie  England.  Bold  and  dauntless  yeoman,  he 
embodies  the  spirit  of  the  free  out-of-doors  in  all 
its  vivid  objectiveness,  its  fresh  adventure  and 
constant  activity.  If  we  would  seek  his  counter- 
part in  modern  life,  we  should  find  it,  more  than 
anywhere  else,  in  the  fast  vanishing  cowboy  life 
of  the  American  West. 

"I'm  a  rowdy  cowboy  just  ofF  the  stormy  plains, 

My  trade  is  girting  saddles  and  pulling  bridle  reins, 

Oh,  I  can  tip  the  lasso,  it  is  with  graceful  ease; 

I  rope  a  streak  of  lightning,  and  ride  it  where  I  please." 

But  Robin  as  a  mediaeval  hero  was  more  signifi- 
cant than  the  cowboy  of  to-day;  for  he  was,  as 
Professor  Lawrence  says,  the  very  "incarnation  of 
democratic  revolt;  born  not  of  human  parents,  but 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    383 

of  the  imagination  of  the  English  peasantry;  a 
bold  outlaw,  created  to  typify  resistance  to  abuses 
of  the  law,  he  typifies  above  all  else  the  protest 
of  the  English  people  against  social  injustice." 
The  popular  songs  and  ballads  that  have  gathered 
about  his  name  are  many  and  varied;  but  the  cen- 
tral theme  of  them  all  is  that  of  Robin  as  a 
champion  of  the  rights  of  the  common  people 
against  the  oppression  of  nobles  and  clergy.  Per- 
haps the  most  typical  ballad  is  the  "Gest,"  which 
opens  with  a  description  of  Robin,  clad  in  Lincoln 
green  with  his  trusty  bow  at  his  side,  telling  his 
men  that  he  cannot  feel  any  appetite  for  dinner 
till  he  has  brought  in  some  wealthy  evil-doer  to 
share  the  meal  and  pay  right  roundly  for  it  after- 
wards. But  Robin  is  no  ordinary  outlaw — he 
has  his  code  which  he  is  careful  to  impress  upon 
his  doughty  follower.  Little  John. 

"Maistar,"  than  sayde  Lytil  Johnn, 
"And  we  our  horde  shal  sprede, 

Tel  us  wheder  that  we  shal  go, 
And  what  life  that  we  shal  lede." 

"Thereof  no  force,"  than  sayde  Robyn; 

"We  shall  do  well  inowe ; 
But  loke  ye  do  no  husbonde  harme, 

That  tilleth  with  his  ploughe. 


384  English  Leadership 

"No  more  ye  shall  no  gode  yeman 
That  walketh  by  grene-wode  shawe; 

Ne  no  knyght  ne  no  squyer 
That  wol  be  a  gode  felawe. 

"These  bisshopes  and  these  arche-bisshopes, 

Ye  shall  them  bete  and  bynde ; 
The  hye  sherif  of  Notyingham, 

Hym  holde  ye  in  your  mynde." 

"This  worde  shal  be  holde,"  sayde  Lytell  Johnn, 

"And  this  lesson  we  shall  lere; 
It  is  fer  dayes ;  God  send  us  a  gest, 

That  we  were  at  oure  dynere!" 

Soon  a  knight  comes  riding  by;  after  treating  him 
to  a  hearty  meal,  they  find  that  he  has  but  ten 
shillings  in  his  purse.  He  tells  them  that  his 
estate  is  mortgaged  to  a  wealthy  abbot,  who 
threatens  to  take  it  from  him.  Robin  lends  him 
money  to  pay  his  debts,  and  goes  out  to  make  good 
his  own  loss  by  robbing  the  abbot's  treasurer  of 
the  required  amount;  when  the  knight  finally  re- 
turns to  repay  the  borrowed  money,  Robin  not 
only  refuses  to  accept  it,  but  gives  the  knight 
enough  to  start  life  over  again.  When  the  knight 
attempts  to  express  his  gratitude  Robin  assures 
him  there  is  no  need, — he  has  already  been  paid, 
as  is  fit,  from  the  abbot's  treasury. 

Such,  then,  was  the  English  popular  hero,  Robin 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     385 

Hood,  champion  of  the  needy  and  the  oppressed, 
enemy  of  the  rich  and  unprincipled,  dispenser  of 
justice  among  the  people  in  a  day  when  courts 
were  the  tools  of  personal  power  rather  than  the 
instruments  of  an  impartial  justice.  A  people 
whose  imagination  could  produce  a  hero  so  bluff 
and  wholesome,  so  fair  in  fight,  so  generous  of 
heart,  could  well  be  trusted  to  attain  its  rightful 
place  in  the  social  order;  and  having  achieved  that 
aim,  it  could  be  trusted,  also,  to  embody  its  ideal 
in  a  democracy  whose  fundamental  principles 
would  be  safe  and  sane  leadership,  true  social 
equality  and  generous  humanitarianism.  It  was 
the  people  visioned  forth  in  "Piers  Ploughman" 
and  in  the  Robin  Hood  ballads,  people  with  a 
strongly  ethical  bent  and  with  a  hearty  appreciation 
of  a  good  story  truthfully  told,  who  laid  the  foun- 
dation for  the  development  of  the  English  drama; 
it  was  these  people  who  made  up  the  larger  part  of 
Shakespeare's  audience,  these  people  for  whom 
he  wrote,  these  people  from  whom  he  drew  such 
unforgettable  figures  as  Falstaff.  It  was  the  ex- 
periences of  a  virtuous  serving  maid  from  the 
lowly  walks  of  life,  which  form  the  plot  of  that 
earliest  of  English  novels,  Richardson's  "Pamela." 
It  was  the  homely  life  of  a  village  parson  with 
all    his    guilelessness,    his    charity    and    unworld- 


386  English  Leadership 

liness  "more  skilled  to  raise  the  wretched  than  to 
rise,"  which  appeals  to  us  still  in  "The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield."  It  is  that  same  village  life  with  all 
its  host  of  characters  from  the  common  walks  of 
life,  its  Silas  Marner  and  its  Tess  of  the  d'Urber- 
villes,  its  chastened  Hester  of  the  Scarlet  Letter 
no  less  than  its  irrepressible  Tom  Sawyer  and 
Huckleberry  Finn;  it  is  that  same  village  life  de- 
scribed by  Goldsmith  which  forms  the  setting  of 
so  much  of  English  poetry  and  fiction: 

"Sweet  Auburn !     loveliest  village  of  the  plain ; 
Where  health  and  plenty  cheered  the  laboring  swain, 
Where  smiling  spring  its  earliest  visit  paid, 
And  parting  summer's  lingering  blooms  delayed: 
Dear  lovely  bowers  of  innocence  and  ease, 
Seats  of  my  youth,  when  every  sport  could  please. 
How  often  have  I  lingered  o'er  thy  green, 
Where  humble  happiness  endeared  each  scene!" 

It  was  these  same  people  of  the  great  lower  classes 
whose  cause  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  pleaded  by  Gray  and  Burns,  as  well  as  by 
Goldsmith: 

"And  thou,  sweet  Poetry,  loveliest  maid,  .  .  . 
Still  let  thy  voice,  prevailing  over  time,  .  .  . 
Aid  slighted  truth  with  thy  persuasive  strain; 
Teach  erring  man  to  spurn  the  rage  of  gain ; 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature    387 

Teach  him  that  states  of  native  strength  possest, 
Though  very  poor,  may  still  be  very  blest; 
That  trade's  proud  empire  hastes  to  swift  decay, 
As  ocean  sw^eeps  the  labored  mole  away ; 
While  self-dependent  power  can  time  defy, 
As  rocks  resist  the  billows  and  the  sky." 

It  was  these  people  of  the  village  and  the  country- 
side whose  interests  were  so  vitally  at  stake  in 
the  great  Industrial  Revolution  which  so  trans- 
formed the  whole  face  of  English  life  In  the  clos- 
ing years  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  was  these 
people  whose  Insistent  demands  accomplished  the 
establishment  of  social  equality,  and  the  conse- 
quent up-bullding  of  the  greatest  democracy  which 
the  world  has  yet  seen,  a  democracy  based  upon  a 
combination,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  of  those 
two  vital  elements,  leadership  and  social  equality, 
both  of  which  had  been  wrought  out  of  English 
experience  through  centuries  of  struggle. 

The  spirit  of  this  new  democracy  found  expres- 
sion In  literature  In  the  spread  of  the  Romantic 
movement,  the  "Renaissance  of  Wonder."  "If 
I  were  to  make  one  characteristic  of  this  move- 
ment the  essential  or  most  prominent  one,"  Curtis 
Hidden  Page  has  said,  "I  should  choose  an  aspect 
which  I  think  has  not  even  been  mentioned  before, 
namely,  that  it  is  the  beginning  of  democracy  in 


388  English  Leadership 

literature,  of  the  expression  in  literature  of  the 
life  of  every  man  and  of  all  the  people;  that  it 
at  last  transformed  the  Aristocracy  of  Letters, 
which  had  been  made  even  more  aristocratic  than 
ever  by  the  Renaissance  and  by  the  Classical  Rule, 
into  a  true  Republic  of  Letters;  and  prepared  the 
way  for  the  democratic,  the  ail-inclusively  realistic, 
and  even  the  social,  literature  of  the  future." 
Gradually  that  popular  revolt  "against  rational- 
ism, convention,  artifice,  dullness,  narrowness, 
formality,  and  rules  of  all  kinds"  had  become 
"revolution,  emancipation,  and  the  complete  crea- 
tion of  a  new  society.  Freedom  is  its  war-cry, 
individual  feeling  its  basis  of  citizenship  in  the 
new  Republic  of  Letters.  The  liberty  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the  right  to  expression  in  Literature 
of  each  individual's  inmost  and  most  peculiar 
feelings,  whether  typical  or  not,  whether  rational 
or  not,  whether  social  or  anti-social, — in  short,  the 
rights  of  the  individual  ego  to  complete  indepen- 
dence and  self-expression, — that  is  what  the 
Romantic  movement  first  of  all  stands  for." 

The  literature  of  the  "classes"  in  England  had 
all  too  often  been  molded  and  almost  disguised  by 
foreign  moods  and  forms;  but  the  spirit  of  the 
people  themselves,  the  truly  English  spirit,  with  its 
love  of  freedom  and  its   reverence   for  law,   its 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     389 

insistence  upon  social  equality  and  its  willing  sub- 
mission to  worthy  leadership,  was  making  itself 
heard  down  through  the  centuries;  it  was  that 
spirit  which,  in  the  last  hundred  years,  has  come 
into  its  own.  That  intense  English  individualism, 
almost  anti-social,  led  Shelley  and  Keats  and 
Byron  to  fling  to  the  world  their  magnificent  chal- 
lenge,— ^the  right  to  think  and  act  as  their  inmost 
highest  impulse  prompted.  But  that  same  Eng- 
lish love  of  social  justice  which  had  forced  a  world 
to  recognize  the  rights  of  the  individual  was  the 
power  that  sooner  or  later  was  bound  to  force 
the  individual  to  recogn'ze  the  rights  of  the  world, 
the  rights  of  humanity.  And  so  the  Romantic 
movement  found  its  corrective  in  the  Realism 
which  dominates  our  modern  novel  and  our  social 
drama.  English  individualism,  given  social  op- 
portunity, is  the  trait  which  prompts  to  conse- 
crated leadership.  Love  of  justice,  reverence  for 
law,  this  is  the  trait  which  inevitably  finds  expres- 
sion in  social  equality.  These  two  ideals,  leader- 
ship and  social  equality,  have  been  wrought  out 
for  us  to-day  through  centuries  of  English  experi- 
ence. Those  strains  are  heard  again  and  again, 
throbbing  through  all  that  is  truly  English  in 
literature.     Harmonized  by  English  genius,  we 


390  English  Leadership 

hear  them  to-day  blended  into  that  great  anthem 
whose  theme  is  the  spirit  of  democracy. 

What  end  may  that  spirit  of  democracy  serve? 
The  world  has  already,  we  hope,  been  made  safe 
for  democracy;  it  remains  now  to  make  democracy 
safe  for  the  world.  It  was  the  English-speaking 
peoples  who  gave  to  a  world  oppressed  that 
ideal  of  individual  freedom  under  social  law 
which  we  call  democracy.  It  is  that  ideal  for  the 
preservation  of  which  they  have  mutually  pledged 
in  enduring  brotherhood  their  lives,  their  fortunes 
and  their  sacred  honor.  If  that  ideal  is  to  be 
preserved,  it  must  be  on  the  basis  of  those  two 
great  elements  which  English  experience  has 
wrought  out  through  the  centuries.  On  the  one 
hand  there  must  be  a  broad  social  equality  which 
levels  all  those  artificial  restraints  and  distinctions 
which  classes  have  erected  in  the  past;  all  men 
must  be  equal  before  the  law;  there  must  be  equal- 
ity of  opportunity  for  all;  each  man  must  have  his 
fair  chance  to  make  the  most  of  whatever  ability 
he  has;  humanity  has  need  of  it  every  whit.  If 
we  would  make  democracy  safe  for  the  world,  we 
must  see  to  it  that  "government  of  the  people,  by 
the  people,  for  the  people  shall  not  perish  from 
the  earth."  But  on  the  other  hand,  if  there  is  to 
be  any  progress  at  all,  the  good  must  always  give 


English  Gift  to  World  Literature     391 

way  to  the  best;  humanity  must  be  ready,  In  truly 
English  spirit,  to  submit  itself  willingly,  loyally, 
to  the  leadership  of  Its  best.  The  great  hope  for 
democracy  Is  that  It  Is  founded  on  that  biologic 
law  that  leadership  is  Instinctively  recognized. 
If  we  would,  then,  attain  the  heights  of  a  new 
world  freedom,  we  must  not  disregard  the  helping 
hand  of  "our  nobler  brothers,  one  in  blood,"  with 
whom  we  are  struggling  upward  along  that  steep 
and  rock-strewn  path  of  a  conscious  social  prog- 
ress, the  story  of  which 

"Continues  yet  the  old,  old  legend  of  our  race, 
The  loftiest  of  life  upheld  by  death." 

If  we  would  make  our  democracy  safe  for  the 
world,  we  must  heed  the  warning  of  that  most 
earnest  of  earnest  Englishmen,  Rudyard  Kipling: 

"Keep  ye  the  Law — be  swift  in  all  obedience. 
Clear  the  land  of  evil,  drive  the  road  and  bridge  the  ford. 
Make  ye  sure  to  each  his  own 
That  he  reap  what  he  hath  sown ; 

By  the  peace  among   Our  peoples  let  men   know   we 
serve  the  Lord." 

And  If  we  would  keep  our  course  true  to  the  star 
of  the  new  democracy,  we  must  not  forget  that 
we  sail  for  the  port  of  Universal  Social  Welfare, 


392  English  Leadership 

bearing  with  us,  as  Walt  Whitman,  that  venerable 
prophet  of  the  New  Democracy,  reminds  us,  the 
precious  freight  of  all  the  past  experience  of  the 
race: 

"Sail,  sail  thy  best,  ship  of  Democracy; 

Of  value  is  thy  freight ;  'tis  not  the  Present  only, 

The  Past  is  also  stored  in  thee. 

Thou  holdest  not  the  venture  of  thyself  alone,  not  of  the 

Western  continent  alone; 
Earth's  resume  entire  floats  on  thy  keel,  O  ship,  is  steadied 

by  thy  spars. 
With  thee  Time  voyages  in  trust,  the  antecedent  nations 

sink  or  swim  with  thee; 
With  all  their  ancient  struggles,  martyrs,  heroes,  epics, 

wars,  thou  bear'st  the  other  continents ; 
Theirs,    theirs,    as   much    as   thine,    the   destination-port 

triumphant. 
Steer  then  with  good  strong  hand  and  wary  eye,  O 

helmsman,  thou  earnest  great  companions; 
Venerable  priestly  Asia  sails  this  day  with  thee. 
And  royal  feudal  Europe  sails  with  thee." 


INDEX 


Adams,  John  Couch,  248,  317 
"Advancement    of    Learning," 

238,  251,  275 
Africa,   20,   22,    126,    146,    152, 

15s.   156,   161 
Agriculture,  171,  172,  192,  295- 

298 
Alamanni,  36,  42 
Alchemy,  226,  230,  231,  267 
Alfred,   52 

America,  North,   115,  125,  133 
American   Revolution,   20,   21, 

150,   301,  368 
Anatomy,  251 
Ancients,   Science  among,  225, 

226,   227,   228,   231,   238 
Angles,  see  Anglo-Saxons 
"Anglo-Saxon   Chronicle,"  43 
Anglo-Saxon  Fellowship,    347, 

348 
Anglo-Saxons,    3,    28,    36,    37, 

42,     43.   49-52,   65,    74,    134, 

172,    173,    181,   351-359,   361, 

375.  376 

Anne,  Queen  of  England,  107, 
108,  112,  279 

Arabic  Culture,  223,  226,  232 

Aragon,  72,  79 

Area,  Influence  of,  185,  187 

Aristocracy,  39,  40,  41,  50,  63, 
64,  65,  66,  67,  68,  74,  78,  79, 
81.  93,  95,  98,  106,  117,  119, 

376,  388 

Aristotle,    232,    233,    234,    238, 

255,  268 
Army,  102 
Astronomy,   230,   250,  252-263, 

267,  275 


Astrology,   226,   228,   229,   230, 

231 
Austerlitz,  29 
Australia,  20,   22,  23,   148 
Austria-Hungary,    138 


Bacon,  Francis,  223,  224,  235, 
237,  238-245,  247,  248,  249, 
250,  251,  253,  266,  293,  297, 
342,  357 

Bacon,  Roger,  223,  225,  233, 
234,   235,   238,   249,   342 

Ball,  John,  84,  86,  377,  378 

Balladry,  Popular,   382-385 

Barbon,  Nicholas,  295-296,  297, 
298 

Barons,  see  Aristocracy 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  305-309 

"Beowulf,"  351-356,  366,  367, 
368 

Berkeley,  George,  273 

Bill  of  Rights,  7,  9,  II,  102, 
137,  268 

Birmingham,  118 

Black  Death,  84,  377 

Blood,  Circulation  of,  242,  251, 
317 

Boer  War,   156 

Botany,  267,  323 

Boyle,  Robert,  245,  251,  267 

Brotherhood,  Universal,  335, 
338-339,  389-392 

British  Empire,  18,  21-26,  29, 
31,  38,  140,  145-158,  160-162, 
195-215 

British  Isles,  Effects  of  loca- 
tion upon,  188-190 


393 


394 


Index 


British    Isles,    Geography    of, 

165-195 
British    Isles,    Unification    of, 

204-205 
Brittany,  46 

Burke,   Edmund,   21,   368,   369 
Byron,  Lord,  371,  389 

Cabinet  Government,  see  Min- 
isterial  system 

Canada,  20,  21,  22,  24,  131 

Capetians,  55 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  371-373 

Carolingians,   56 

Cartesian  theory,  258-260,  264 

Cavaliers,  iii 

Celts,  173,  181,  204,  381 

Charles  I,  King  of  England, 
loi,   102,  108 

Charles  II,  King  of  England, 
108,  III 

Chartist  movement,  119,  120 

Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  378 

Chemistry,   248,   250,   267,    316 

Cherbury,  Herbert  of,  274 

China,   15 

Christian  Science,  335-338 

Churchill,      Winston,      quoted, 

347-348 

Church  of  England,  95,  96,  9/. 
100 

Church  of  Rome,  70,  76,  80,  85, 
86,  87,  95,  96,  97,  129 

Civil  Service,  122 

Cleavage,  Line  of,  in  England, 
191,  194 

Clergy,  74,  79,  80,  85,  86 

Climate,  Influence  of,  171,  172 

Coal,  287-289 

Colonial  policy,  see  Coloniza- 
tion 

Colonies,   Dutch,   132,   133 

Colonies,  English,  125,  126, 
127,  128,  129,  133,  134,  135, 
136,  137,  150,  151,  210, 
213 

Colonies,  French,  132,  133 


Colonization,  38,  125,  126,  127, 
128,  129,  130,  131,  145,  146, 
147.  148,  149,  150,  151,  152, 
153,  154.  155,  156,  201-213 

Commerce,  38,  81,  82,  94,  95, 
98,  99,  104,  125,  146,  149, 
150,  153,  154.  155,  295-298 

Commoners,  37,  63,  64,  66,  67, 
68,  77,  81,  91,  93,  99,  116, 
117,   118,   130 

Common  Pleas,  Court  of,  79 

Commons,  House  of,  6,  17,  62, 
77,  90,  103,  109,  no,  112, 
117,    118,    119,    120,   123 

Congress,  of  United  States,  5, 
6,  9,  10 

Conservatism,  English,  16,  26, 
192,  371 

Constitution,  of  United  States, 
see  Federalism 

Cook,  Captain,  148 

Copernicus,  242,  254 

Cornwall,  47 

Courts  in  England,  61,  62,  78, 
79i  95,   106,   122,   125 

Creation,    320,    321,    325,    326, 

334 
Cromwell,     Oliver,     360,     361, 

362 
Crusades,  232,  235 
Cuvier,   Baron,   321,   324 

Dalton,  John,  248,  316,  317 

Darwin,  Charles,  248,  304,  324, 
326-330 

Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  219,  316, 
317 

Deists,  English,  274 

Democracy,  44,  50,  84,  100, 
116,  118,  121,  122,  123,  124, 
137,  138,  139,  141,  155,  158, 
159,  160,  220,  241,  269,  293, 
350,  351,  356-357,  360-363, 
367-368,  369,  371-375,  382- 
385,  387-392 

Descartes,  Rene,  242,  243,  258, 
259,  267,  270 


Index 


395 


Diderot,  114 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  127,  128 
Drama,  Modern,  389 
Dynamics,  science  of,  256,  257, 
259 

Economics,  science  of,  277,  294- 

315 
Eddy,  Mary  Baker,  336 
Edward  the  Confessor,  57,  58, 

74,  159 
Edward  I,   King  of  England, 

77.  78,  97 
Edward  III,  King  of  England, 

81,  82 
Edward  VI,  King  of  England, 

97 

Egbert,  52 

Electricity,   248,   250,   251,   318 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  England, 
92,  93.  98,  100,  loi,  102,  127, 
128 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  373-374 

Emigration,  201 

Enclosures,  98,  282 

English  Character,  28,  29,  35, 
36,  45,  46,  98,  123,  125,  126, 
129,  145-146,  152,  156,  158, 
272.    358,    372,   373,    381-382, 

389 
"Essay      Concerning      Human 

Understanding,"     244,     269- 

272 
Ethnic  fusion,  in  British  Isles, 

173-175,  i8i 
Evolution,  Theory  of,  248,  315, 

319-333 
Exchequer,  79,  95 
Executive  function,  5,  6,  9,  106, 

109-110,  140,  143,  144 
Expansion     of     England,     99, 

126-130,    145,    147,    149-158, 

160-162,  195-215 
Experimental      Method,      240, 

250,  275,  276 
Exploration,    Period    of,     124- 

126,  14s,  148,  236-237 


Factory  system,  283-291 
Faraday,   Michael,   248,   318 
Federalism,  5,  9,  22,  130,  131, 

134-137.   141,   143 
Feudalism,    50-68,    73,    76,    78, 

82,  84,  93,  95,  97,  105 
Flanders,  73,  82 
Folk-moot,     see     Government, 

Local 
Fox,   Charles  James,   21 
France,  28-30,   61,   62,   64,   68- 

69,  73.  77,  79-81,  85,  93,  103, 

114-115,    125,    131-133,    139, 

142-143,  146-150,  278 
Franchise,  117-119,  140-142 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  251 
Franks,  36-37,  42,  49-51,  53,  60 
Freedom  of  debate,    90,    102 
Freeman,  E.  A.,  quoted,  58,  75 
French  Revolution,  28,  80,  85, 

H4-116,  138 

Galileo,  253-255,  257,  267 

Gaul,  42 

Geographic     factor.     Theories 

of,   176-178 
Geography,    Influence    of,    28, 

37,  51,  81,  116,  124,  126,  129, 

165-215,  222-224 
Geology,   320-323 
George    I,    King   of   England, 

107-109,  279 
George  II,   King  of  England, 

109,  279 
George  III,  King  of  England, 

21,   109-110,  279 
George   V,   King  of  England, 

134 
Germany,  3,  29,  30,  64,  73,  104, 

125,   139.   142 
Gilbert,  William,  242,  250,  267 
Glorious    Revolution,     11,    91, 

102,  268,  277 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  386,  387 
Goths,  42 
Government,   Colonial,   19-27; 

see  also  Colonization 


396 


Index 


Government,  Constitutional,  5, 
9,  17,  22,  58-59,  65,  70,  72-79, 
82-83,    87-93,    100-103,    106- 

112,     115-124,    130-143,    269 

Government,  Local,  40,  44,  53, 
60,  64,  65,  82,  121,  122,  135 

Government,  Popular,  3-7,  13- 
16,  19-28,  31,  35,  37,  100,  106, 
121,  124,  126,  131,  135-139. 
150,  151,  155,  160,  161 

Government,  Representative, 
42,  44,  45,  62,  64,  65,  74-79, 
87,  89,  91,  100,  102,  110-112, 
116-120,  130,  134,  135-137, 
139.  141,  143,  144,  159-162 

Grand  Remonstrance,  iii 

Gravitation,  Law  of,  260,  261- 
263 

Gray,  Thomas,  387 

Great  Britain,  Island  of,  39, 
42,  45-47,  165-195 

Great  Charter,  see  Magna 
Carta 

Great  Rebellion,  91,  loi,  102, 
130,  360-363,  366 

Great  Schism,  85 

Great  War,  The,  3,  20,  30,  31, 
213-215 

Greeks,  40,  225,  226,  233,  275, 
319 

Grew,  Nehemiah,  267,  323 

Habeas  Corpus  Acts,  7,  8,  137 
Halley,  Edmund,  261,  267 
Haney,  Professor,  quoted,  304- 

305 
Hanseatic  League,  82,  125 
Harold,  King  of  England,  54, 

57 
Harriot,  Thomas,  252,  253,  256, 

267 
Harvey,    William,    242,    251, 

317,  325 
Haskins,    Charles,   quoted,    54, 

173 
Hastings,  Warren,  153 
Hawkins,  John,  127-128 


Henry  I,  King  of  England,  58- 

60,  63,  74,  159 

Henry    H,    King   of   England, 

61,  63,  66,  69,  78,  97 
Henry  HI,   King  of  England, 

75,   77.   89 
Henry   IV,   King  of  England, 

87-92 
Henry  V,  King  of  England,  92 
Henry   VI,   King  of  England, 

92 
Henry  VII,  King  of  England, 

92-95 
Henry  VIII,  King  of  England, 

92-97,   100 
Hobbes,  Thomas,  266,  267,  269, 

297 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  69 
House   of   Solomon,   240,   245, 

247,  248,  249 
Huguenots,  131,  278 
Humanitarianism,  305-315,  381 
Hume,  David,  297-298,  303 
Hundred,  see  Government,  Lo- 
cal 
Hundred    Years'   War,    81-83, 

92 
Hutton,  James,  322-323,  326 

Imperialism,  145,  158,  160-161 
Imperial    Federation,   23,    156- 

158 
Independence,   Declaration  of, 

137,  301,  347,  348 
India,  24,  26,  126,  146-148,  152- 

155,   161 
Individualism,    249,    275,    297- 

301,  371-373.  387-389 
Inductive  Method,  239 
Industrial  Revolution,  116,  117, 

193,  194,  200,  287-293,  311 
Industry,  94,  277-293 
Inquest,   61,   62 
Inquisition,    131 
Insularity,  Influence  of,  37,  38, 

181-185,  207 
Invention,  221,  248,  277 


Index 


397 


Ireland,  17-19,  30,  168-169,  172, 

185,  186 
Iron,  287-289 
Italy,  73,  104,  138,  142 

James  I,  King  of  England,  92, 

loi,  134 
James   II,    King   of   England, 

III 
Jamestown,  127 
Japan,  139 
Jews,   131 

John,  King  of  England,  69,  70 
Jubilee,  Queen's,  13 
Judicial  function,  5,  7,  11,  12, 

13,  106 
Jury,  8,  12,  13,  15,  25,  61,  62; 

see   also   Courts;   Law 
Jutes,  see  Anglo-Saxons 

Keats,  John,  371,  389 

Kepler,  Johann,  253,  255,  256, 
258,  259 

King's  Bench,  Court  of,  79 

Kingship,  17,  18,  43,  50,  52,  55- 
59,  63,  64,  68,  69,  75,  76,  78, 
81,  87-93,  96-97,  ICX3-I03,  106, 

108,    no,    III 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  215,  357, 
392 

Laissez  faire,  298-299,  306-307 
Lamarck,  326 
Lancaster,  House  of,  87-92 
Langland,  William,  378-380 
Laplace,  220,  263-265,  321,  325 
Law,  English,  7-1 1,  14,  16,  57, 

58,   61,  75,  78,  90,   102,   106, 

158-160 
Leadership,   English   ideal   of, 

356-375.  387-392 
Leeds,  118 
Legislative  function,  9,  37,  78, 

79,    106,    109,    no,   140 
Liberty,  Civil,  3-10,  13,  16,  23, 

28,    31,    62,    71-73,    83,    100, 

114,   160-162,  269 


Lincoln,    Abraham,    373,    374- 

375 
Linnaeus,  Carl,  324 
Literature,    English    spirit    in, 

347-392 
Locke,  John,  136,  244,  248,  265, 

266,  268-273,    275,   297,    298, 
299 

Logarithms,  251 

Lollard  Movement,  85 

London,  118 

Lords,  House  of,  17,  102,  123 

Louis   XIV,    King   of    France, 

103 
Lowell,    James    Russell,    357, 

374-375 
Luther,   Martin,   104 
Lyell,  Charles,  322-323,  326 

Macaulay,  Thomas,  in 

Machinery,  283 

Macy  and  Gannaway,  quoted, 
108-109 

Magic,  226-228,  231 

Magna  Carta,  7,  9,  58,  70-77, 
123,  159,  376 

Magnetism,  250 

Maldon,  Battle  of,  359,  360 

Malthus,  "Essay  on  Popula- 
tion," 303,  309,  326 

Manchester,  118 

Manufacturing,  280 

Mary,  Queen  of  England,  97, 
128 

Maryland,  129 

Massachusetts,  129 

Mathematics,  251,  252,  256 

Mayflower  Compact,   136 

Mechanical    theory,    259,    265, 

267,  297-8 
Medicine,  228,  251 
Mercantilist    theory,     295-296, 

300,  303 
Merchant  Adventurers,  82 
Metal,  Age  of,  224,  225 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  309-315,332, 

333 


398 


Index 


Milton,  John,  245,  357,  360-367 
Mining  Industry,  287-289 
Ministerial    system,    5,   6,    107- 

iio,  112,  143,  144 
Model  Parliament,  77 
Monastic  Orders,  85,  86 
Montesquieu,  5,  114 
Montfort,  Simon  de,  76 
Morse,  Samuel  F.  B.,  318 
Muir,    Ramsay,    quoted,     157- 

158,    160-162 

Napier,  John,  251,  253,  267 
Napoleonic  Wars,  28,  29,  315, 

368 
National   Council,   see   Witen- 

agemot;  Parliament 
Natural  Selection,  327 
Nebular    Hypothesis,    263-265, 

321,  325 
Nelson,   Lord,   29,   368,  369 
Netherlands,  64,  104,  105,  126, 

132,  146 
"New   Atlantis,"  240,   244 
Newton,    Sir    Isaac,    220,    248, 

251,  252-265,  267,  275,  357 
New  Zealand,  20,  22,  148 
Nietzsche,   Friedrich,   335 
Nobility,  see  Aristocracy 
Normans,  53-56,  62,  66,  69-70, 

98,  174,   175,  181,  187,  376 
Novel,   Modern,   385-386 
"Novum  Organum,"  238,  244 

Ogg,  Frederick  A.,  quoted,  iii, 

289-291 
"Origin   of   Species,"   327,   334 

Page,   Curtis   Hidden,   quoted, 

387-388 
Papacy,  see  Church  of  Rome 
"Paradise  Lost,"  362-367 
Parkman,  Francis,  quoted,  131, 

132 
Parliament,  5,  6,  9,  17,  18,  21, 

62,  65,  66,  74,  77,  87-91,  93, 

96,    97,    100,    102,    103,    106, 


109-112,    117,   120,    122,    125, 

141 
Parliament   Act   of    191 1,    120, 

123 
Party    Government,    109,    iii, 

112 
Peasants'  Revolt,   86 
Peerage,  see   also  Aristocracy, 

67,  93,   "7 
Penn,  William,   136 
Persia,    139 
Petition  of  Right,  7 
Philippine  Islands,  14,  26,  152, 

155 
Philosophy,    English,    265-273, 

274,  297-298 
Physics,   250,   253-263,  275 
Physiocrats,  298-301 
Physiology,  251 
"Piers  Ploughman,"  378-380 
Pilgrim    Independents,    129 
Pitt,  William,  the  Elder,  24 
Pitt,  William,  the  Younger,  29, 

109 
Planetary    Motion,    255,    256, 

258-265 
Plymouth,  Mass.,   129 
Pollard,   A.   F.,    quoted   94-99, 

151 
Portugal,    126,    128,    146 
Press,    Freedom   of,    106,    245, 

268 
Progress,     240-242,     276,     315, 

319,  342,   375.  390-391 
Psychology,  244,  270-274,  330- 

332 
Puritanism,  loi,  129 

Ray,  John,  267,  323,  324 

Realism,  388 

Reformation,     Protestant,     86, 

87,  95.  96,  97.  128,  237 
Reform    Bills,    117,    118,    120, 

121,  293,  307-308 
Religion,  Conflict  with  science, 

269-273,  334,  335,  341.  342 
Renaissance,  231,  235,  236 


Index 


399 


Representative  system,  see 
Government,    Representative 

Republicanism,  see  Federalism 

Restoration,  367 

Revolutions   of    1848,    138 

Richard  I,  King  of  England, 
69,  70 

Richard  II,  King  of  England, 
87-92 

Ritter,  Carl,  124 

Ritter,   Professor,   quoted,   338- 

339 

Robert  of  Normandy,   59 

Robin  Hood,  382-385 

Robinson,  J.  H.,  quoted,  47-48, 
242,  276,  292-293 

Robinson  and  Breasted,  quot- 
ed, 41 

Roman  Empire,  42,  46,  47, 
124 

Romans,   172,  173,   181,  276 

Romanticism,   387-389 

"Rotten  Boroughs,"  118,  119 

Roundheads,   iii 

Rousseau,  114,  274 

Royal   Observatory,   246 

Royal  Society  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science,  219, 
244-249,  267 

Runnymede,   70,  72 

Russia,  15 

Sardinia,  138 

Saxons,  see  Anglo-Saxons 

Scholasticism,    233,    254,    255, 

268 
Scientific    Achievement,    Eng- 
lish,  219-343 
Scotland,  18,  47,  loi,  165,  168, 

186 
Sea-power,   94,    127,   147,    151- 

158,  195-215 
Seeley,  J.  R.,  quoted,  149-150 
Settlement,   Act  of,    102 
Serfdom,  83-85,  87,   105 
Shelley,  Perc>'  B.,   371,  389 
Shire,  see  Government,  Local 


Smith,  Adam,  293,  294,  301-5, 

308,  309,  314 
Smith,  William,  322,  326 
Social  Science,  266,  312 
Social   Equality,    375-380,    386- 

387 
Socialism,  84,  85,  87,  377,  378 
Solar  System,  263-265 
Spain,  42,  64,  72,  79,  100,  104, 

126-128,   131,    142,   146,   149- 

152 
Spanish  Armada,   100 
Spencer,  Herbert,  330-333 
Star  Chamber,  Court  of,  95 
Steam  power,  285-293 
Spinning  Machines,  283-291 
Stephen,     King     of    England, 

63 
Stuart,  House  of,  8,  11,  92,  100- 

102,    108,     no.    III 

Stubbs,  Bishop,  quoted,  59,  71, 

91,   92,   103,   107 
Supreme     Court,     of     United 

States,  9 
Sweden,  105 
Switzerland,  105,  137,  144 

Tacitus,  39,  42,  43 

Taswell-Langmead,  quoted,  88 

Taxation,  77,  90,  95,  102,  103, 
no,  123,   140 

Telescope,  254,  255,  276 

Tenants-in-chief,  see  Feudal- 
ism 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  11,  215 

Teutons,  3,  28,  36,  39,  40,  42, 
43,  45-47,  49,  50,  172-174 

Textile  Industry,  82,  171,  278- 
285 

Theosophists,  335 

Third  Estate,  37,  63,  64,  dT, 
68,  72,  77,   80,   81,   103 

Tocqueville,  quoted,  103,  105, 
114 

Toleration,   266,  268-273,  277 

Tolstoy,  Leo,  335 

Tory  Party,  109,  in,  112 


400 


Index 


Towns,  44,  64,  65,  68,  72,  73, 

81-83,   104 
Trade-gilds,   64 
Trade,  see  Commerce 
Tudor,   House  of,  92-94,  96-99 
Turkey,   139 
Tyler,   Wat,   86 
Tyndall,  John,  quoted,  329-330, 

333.   340-341 

Usher,  Archbishop,   320 
Uniformitarian    Theory,    322- 

323,  326 
United  States,  20,  21,  30,  130, 

131,  137  . 
Utilitarianism,    244,    269,    297, 

298,  303,   305-315 

Vassalage,  see  Feudalism 
Victoria,    Queen    of    England, 

12,    13 
Villeins,  see  Serfdom 
Virginia,   130 
Virginia    Company,    127 
Voltaire,   243,   248,   273,   274 

Wales,  47,  165,  168,  173,  186 

Walpole,  Horace,  108 

Wars  of  the  Roses,  82,  93,  95 


Washington,  George,  72,  369 
"Wealth  of  Nations,"  301,  302- 

305. 
Weaving  machinery,  283-291 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  29,  368 
Whig  Party,   iii,   112 
Whitman,  Walt,  374,  392 
William  the  Conqueror,  King 

of  England,  53-59,  6i,  63,  65, 

66,  68,  159 
William  II,  King  of  England, 

59,  60 
William  III,   and  Mary,   Sov- 
ereigns of  England,  102,  108, 

112 
William  IV,  King  of  England, 

no 
Wilson,  Woodrow,  quoted,  71, 

349-350 
Witenagemot,    44,    45,    57,    60, 

65,  66 
Wordsworth,      William,      357, 

370-371 
Wren,   Sir  Christopher,  261 
Wycliffe,  John,  85-87,  ii6,  357 

York,  House  of,  92 

Zoology,  267,  323 


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